


you won't forget us

by dickganseyish



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Disabled Character, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, Romance, Trans Male Character, Violence, akaashi is basically frozone's wife, captains are superheroes, kenma's a tech whiz, or queer at least, suga's a journalism student, ushiwaka just wants to make friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15739989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickganseyish/pseuds/dickganseyish
Summary: In a society where those with superhuman abilities were once revered, a rescue attempt gone wrong drives the heroes underground after the public who once adored them begins to call for their blood.  Over 50 years later, Sawamura Daichi discovers that he has an impossible power, and after a mysterious masked man blows up a train in Tokyo, vows to use his powers to defend the innocent.  He joins forces with four other people who all possess their own abilities, and together, the team of heroes work to protect Tokyo.Or, five overpowered idiots cause millions of yen worth of damage, fall in love, make lots of mistakes, form lifelong friendships, and save the world.





	1. give me grace, bury my sins

**Author's Note:**

> heyy everyone, this is the first time i've ever published one of my fics, but i've been a fan of hq for so long i'm surprised it took me this long! i started writing this before i ever watched bnha, but some of the stuff i have planned wound up being kind of similar, so some of the later stuff might sound a little familiar. please be gentle with me, and thanks for reading!!
> 
> chapter title from i'm born to run by american authors
> 
> twitter: @biaizawa  
> tumblr: @dickganseyish  
> feel free to come yell at me about these idiots any time :)

Sawamura Daichi was the textbook definition of average.

He was medium height, had dark hair kept short like most boys his age, did well enough in school, was a good son, had plenty of friends, and was a member of a club at school.  His family was nagging but supportive, his brother was annoying but fun, and he was just as wary of the rumors of people with superhuman abilities as everyone else seemed to be. 

He’d heard the whispers too, the tales kids at sleepovers told their friends to scare them all, the questions his classmates asked longsuffering history teachers who, with fearful looks in their eyes and forced chuckles, said why of course they’re not real, who on earth put the idea in your head that people with superpowers were real? His grandparents were the same, denying the existence of these quote-unquote Extraordinaries in the first place with the same look in their eyes as all the other adults old enough to remember.  So when he suddenly found himself able to fly, he was, understandably, absolutely _terrified_.

It was an innocuous day the spring before his third year of high school.  He was goofing around with his younger brother in the park near their house, playing the imaginary games kids are fond of, this day’s game being, as his brother called it, space pirates.  Hitoshi had taken refuge in the boughs of the largest tree in the park, which, towering above the playground, put him out of the reach of Daichi’s finger gun/laser beam.  Ignoring Daichi’s shouts vowing for revenge he climbed higher and higher in the enormous tree, hands and feet propelling him to a height several stories above the ground. He had turned to yell a taunt down to his big brother when he lost his footing and began to fall, arms wheeling through the air and his small face frozen in horror.  Daichi’s heart dropped into his stomach and terror coursed through his veins the instant he saw his brother’s foot slip.  Daichi was noble and protective above all else, always having the backs of everyone he held dear (he wasn’t his team’s strongest receiver for nothing), so when he watched as his baby brother, his Hitoshi, start to fall from a height that would most certainly irreparably damage his eight-year-old body, he acted on instinct, surging forward, _upward_ , to rescue him.

As he snatched Hitoshi out of the air, his brain finally caught up to his body and realized just what he had done.

 _Holy shit I’m flying. I’m_ literally _flying_ _how the_ hell _is this possible._

But he knew how it was possible.  Hitoshi did too. For the moment, though, it was unimportant because _I almost lost you._   When they touched down to earth again, he yanked his brother into a tight hug, pressing his face into Hitoshi’s hair to hide the tears pricking at his eyes.  Hitoshi shuddered and gripped at Daichi’s back, squeezing him as tightly as he could.  The brothers clung to one another for a moment longer before breaking apart, and Daichi knelt in front of Hitoshi.  Looking him in the face, Daichi saw that, although fear still lingered, amazement now shone in his brother’s eyes.

Hitoshi gaped openly, having realized just how his brother had rescued him, and he gasped, “You – how did you do that?”

Daichi took a shaky breath and stammered, “I – I don’t know.  This – this isn’t possible, people can’t just fly!”

But Daichi knew the truth, he had just been trying to keep himself from even thinking the words, because acknowledging them meant that it was real, that there was no going back, that he wasn’t _normal_ anymore.

_I’m an Extraordinary._

He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and met his gaze, trying to stop the trembling in his hands before sucking in a breath and setting his jaw.  “Hitoshi, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? No one, not Mom and Dad, not your friends, not _my_ friends, no one! I’m – this isn’t natural, it’s not safe, and- and let’s just keep it between us, okay?”

Hitoshi hesitated before nodding, knowing just as well as Daichi that they could never ignore what had just happened.

~

He and Hitoshi returned home from the park shaken, and when their mother caught sight of both of their faces, still pale with fear, as they walked in the door, she rushed over to them and asked if they were okay, concern palpable in her voice.

Daichi considered his words for a moment before deciding that as much honesty as possible was probably the right way to go, and he responded, “Yeah, Mom, we’re okay.  Hitoshi, he fell out of a tree - you know, that really tall one - but I, uh, managed to catch him before he hit the ground.  I – I never thought my volleyball skills would have, um, a practical application, but,” Daichi forced a laugh, “looks like I’ve been proven wrong.”

Their mother’s eyes widened in horror, and she looked from Daichi to Hitoshi to confirm this story.  Hitoshi looked to Daichi, who gave a small nod, and he put on a brave smile before saying, “Yeah, but it’s okay Mom!  Look, I don’t even have any scratches or anything.” He turned around in a circle, arms wide, to show their mother his lack of injury, but she nonetheless knelt down and wrapped her youngest son into a hug.

“Hitoshi,” she breathed, “oh thank God you’re all right.  Thank God Daichi was there to protect you.” She pulled away from Hitoshi enough to look Daichi in the eyes, her own eyes watery with relief.  Daichi smiled at his mother, who gave him a smile of her own before pressing her face into the nape of Hitoshi’s neck, and the smile slipped from Daichi’s face, the secret he now possessed burning inside him.

~

Daichi sat under a kotatsu, homework spread in front of him, the TV on at low volume.  It had been nine months since the worst day of Daichi’s life, and so far he’d been able to keep his head.  Volleyball had been… a challenge, but his team’s elimination in the prelims, as bitter as he had been, meant he hadn’t had to worry much about anyone, most importantly, someone with a camera, discovering his secret.  Hitoshi lounged on the couch behind him, curled under a heated blanket, flipping idly through the channels while Daichi wrote a lab report for his chemistry class.

Hitoshi suddenly gasped, and Daichi’s hand jerked involuntarily across the page, making a long dark mark across his report. He gave an irritated sigh and turned to look at his brother. “Ugh, Hitoshi, look what you made me do.”

Hitoshi only pointed at the television screen.  Daichi raised an eyebrow before directing his attention to the news, and Hitoshi turned up the volume.

“-ty-two confirmed fatalities so far and countless injuries.  This is the most devastating event in Tokyo since the collapse of the apartment building in Shinjuku 51 years ago.”  Daichi’s eyes widened in horror as the newscaster grimly continued her report.

“The cause is unknown, but several witnesses report that this unidentified masked man,” a grainy image of a man in grey and a ski mask appeared on the television, “stood beside the tracks and raised him arm almost as though firing something at the train moments before it exploded. The suspect seemingly vanished after the accident.  Whether this was a frightening coincidence or something far more sinister is at play, if you have any information at all, please give us a call.” The number of the news station appeared at the bottom of the screen.  “Now, we’ll return to Yamanaka at the scene of the incident.”

“Thank you, Takao-san. As you can see, the fire has begun to spread toward both ends of the train.”  Daichi’s hand flew to his mouth when he saw the extent of the damage, and he heard the remote fall out of Hitoshi’s hand and thud to the floor.  The train had been completely torn in two, apparently by some kind of explosion, and fire was eating rapidly at the train while firefighters tried to put it out.  As the camera panned, he could see people being carried out of the wreckage, limp in the arms of their rescuers both civilian and professional alike, and several bodies draped in black laid near the edge of the scene.

“The authorities have been doing everything they can, but some people still remain trapped on the train.  Their fast action already saved countless people, but – ” A deafening _boom_ sounded, and the camera whipped wildly to the side just in time to see the front end of the train explode.  People began screaming, and a man, his tear-stained face stricken with fear, pushed at the barrier.  The microphone just barely picked up his cries, saying “-son, my son is still on there, please you have to do something!”

The police appeared to try to placate the man, but a boy in a school uniform who had been aiding the authorities in evacuating the train approached the man.  He seemed to ask him a question, and the man pointed to the car directly behind the engine car.  The teenager gave the man a quick nod and rushed toward the smoking car, clambering over the metal side and disappearing into the car.

“It seems that a teenager has just run onto the train to try to save this man’s child!”  The camera zooms in where the boy disappeared into the smoke as the newscaster continues to report the scene.

“What on earth are you two –.” Daichi’s mom, having heard the clamor from the kitchen, walked into the living room. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed as she stared in horror at the scene unfolding on the news, her face draining of its color.

“Is this live?” she asked quietly, and Daichi, unable to tear his eyes away from the disaster, simply nodded.

“Oh, look, there he is! Wow, this kid is a real hero!” the newscaster exclaimed, and sure enough, teenage boy who had run into the train a few moments earlier reappeared from the smoke, a small figure clinging tightly to him.  The moment the child saw his weeping father, he began to struggle, so the older boy sat him down outside the train car so he could run into his father’s outstretched arms.  The teenage boy began to make his way out of the wreckage to safety, but as he put one foot outside the car, straddling its wall, a wave of flames burst up from behind him, throwing the boy out of the car and onto the ground.

“Oh my God, somebody help him!” A shout from somewhere in the crowd rang out above the general cacophony.  A pair of paramedics rushed towards the boy, who was no longer moving, his entire back horrifically burned, and Daichi’s blood turned to ice.

“Daichi, turn this off right now,” his mother commanded, eyes swimming with tears.  She glanced at Hitoshi, who Daichi saw was staring at the tv with wide, fearful eyes.  He grabbed the remote from where it had fallen from Hitoshi’s hand and turned off the tv at once.

~

Much later that night, Daichi tossed and turned in his bed.  The images of the masked man and the teenage boy had burned themselves into his consciousness, and he’d been chasing sleep all night.  He rolled over to face the clock, and the bright red number 3:14 stood out starkly against the darkness of his room.  Daichi flopped onto his back with a heavy sigh and stared at the ceiling.

 _That guy, he looked like he was my age.  He’s just a normal guy, and he was doing everything he could to help people._ _And that masked guy. He’s gotta be some kind of – some kind of_ villain _or something, right? Jesus what even_ is _my life anymore?_

The scene of the high schooler being flung to the ground as flame burst up behind him replayed itself in Daichi’s mind.  This guy, this _kid_ , completely ordinary, probably on his way home after a long day at school, chose to risk life and limb, just to save some stranger?  The fact that Daichi, someone given unbelievable power, had done nothing but repress his power and hide it from the world, while ordinary people like that high schooler performed acts of bravery at great danger to their lives, caused shame, deep and painful, to course through his veins.

And then the masked man.  It couldn’t be a coincidence that the train exploded when he moved, so he used whatever ability he possessed to wreaked unnamable havoc on the city.  Daichi knew that the police would be no match for him, someone who could cause explosions at will, but he also knew that someone capable of such causing such atrocity should be, _needed_ to be stopped, for everyone’s sakes. A mire of fear, shame, and worry stewed in his chest, but, unbidden, an intense desire to do something, _anything_ , rose up from the depths.

_Maybe I could use this curse of mine for good, eh?_

~

Taping closed the last box, this one labeled “Books”, Daichi rocked back on his heels with a sigh and looked around his now empty room.  A sense of finality washed over him as he took in his bare walls, the plain white of them drastically different from the posters that once covered them.  He remembered everything that happened in this room, from when he was sick as a kid and his mom would sit with him until he fell asleep, when his dad would come in after a long day of work and still find time to talk with his son, when Hitoshi would creep in during the middle of the night,  his tear-stained face and snotty nose clear signs of a horrible nightmare, clamber into Daichi’s bed, and curl close to the safety and warmth of his big brother.  Daichi was so caught up in reminiscing that he didn’t hear the door open, and he started when Hitoshi said, “Mom said to tell you dinner’s ready.”

If there was one thing about Miyagi that Daichi would miss when he went away to school it was his mother’s cooking.  Her hot pot was his favorite thing in all the world, the meat melting in your mouth, the vegetables maintaining a crispness that should’ve been impossible, and she had made it for Daichi’s last meal at home without him having to beg, as he usually did.  Daichi made an affirmative grunt, stood up, cracking his back as he did so, and made towards the door, but Hitoshi hovered in the doorway, looking anxious.  As a kid usually carefree and lighthearted, this look was relatively foreign on Hitoshi’s face, and this made Daichi stop in his tracks.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

Hitoshi met his gaze, determination in his eyes, and said, in a rush, as though he couldn’t wait to get the words out, “Even though you’ll be gone, I’ll still keep your secret!”

Daichi looked at his brother for a moment before huffing out a laugh and breaking into a gentle smile.  

“Hey, it’s not like I’m dying or something. I’m only going to Tokyo, it’s only, like, three hours away.  I mean, yeah, shinkansen tickets are expensive, but it’s not like I’m moving to Finland. I won’t be gone forever, you know?”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” said Hitoshi, rolling his eyes, “but still.”  His face turned serious. “I just – I just wanted you to know that I’ve got your back, like you always have mine.”

Well Daichi _definitely_ hadn’t been expecting his little brother to make him cry, so the tears that began to fall down his face didn’t register until they started dripping onto his shirt, and Hitoshi shouted in alarm, flapping his hands around.

“Ahh Daichi, why are you crying? I didn’t mean to make you sad, I’m sorry!”

Daichi laughed and mopped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m okay, it’s just… I’m really going to miss you.”

Hitoshi looked significantly less worried although still wary as though he was afraid Daichi might burst into tears again, and Daichi ruffled his hair, a fond smile on his face. Hitoshi leant into his touch, wearing a smile of his own.

“Me too.”

~

“God, yes, Mom, I studied for my exam.  I’m a third year now, I think I know how to manage my time.” Daichi rolls his eyes at his mother’s well-meaning nagging, shifting the phone to his left shoulder as he finishes balancing an equation for one of his chemistry classes.

“You fucking liar, we both know you watched an entire season of that American tv show and didn’t go to bed until three last night.”

Daichi makes a rude gesture at Kuroo, who gives him a shit-eating grin, and goes back to his phone call. “Yeah Mom, I feel pretty okay about it. You know how I am, I always feel like I failed but end up doing well.”

_“And how’s that – that – what’s that writing class you’re taking again, Dai-chan?”_

“Oh, Intro to Creative Writing. Yeah, it’s going fine too, I wish I didn’t have to take it, but I have to fulfill the requirement and it was the only one that fit with my schedule.”

As a student on the pre-med track, he would really rather have been taking a class that, you know, _actually applied to his major_ , but he supposed as general education requirements went that the course could’ve been much worse.

Kuroo smirks. “Ooh, is that the one you have with that guy you’ve been pining after for weeks?”

Daichi turns to scowl at his roommate. “Shut up Kuroo!”

_“Oh is Tetsurou-kun there? Tell him I say hi!”_

For reasons entirely unbeknownst to Daichi, his mother _loves_ his roommate.  Kuroo is messy and meddlesome and _so damn annoying_ , but his mother is either blind to those or Kuroo somehow tricked her into thinking he was actually a decent human being.

“I will, Mom.” Kuroo is still giving Daichi a look, wriggling his eyebrows and doing weird things with his lips. “Hey, I’ve gotta go, okay? Tell Hitoshi and Dad I say hi and that I miss them.”

 _“I will, and good luck on your exam! I love you, sweetheart._ ”  Daichi can hear the smile in her voice.  God, he misses her.

“Thanks Mom.  I love you too.” He maintains a pleasant tone of voice until he hears the phone click, at which point he says, “Can you not embarrass me in front of my mother please?”

Kuroo places a hand on his chest, feigning innocence.

“What? All I did was point out that your study habits – or lack thereof, I should say – are less than ideal.”

“Well, yeah, but _she_ doesn’t need to know that, okay? I get my shit done and get good grades and that’s all that matters.” Daichi shakes his head in irritation. “Besides, it’s not like you’re any better than I am.  Yeah, you might make better grades than I do, but at least I don’t look like a walking disaster.”

Kuroo makes a noise of indignation and gives Daichi an affronted look.

“Excuse you, I’ll have you know that the ladies dig the bed head,” Kuroo says, gesturing to his impossible hair.

“What ladies,” Daichi snorts, rolling his eyes. “I don’t exactly see them lining up to date you.” A pause, a thought, and then, a smirk. “Besides, literally everybody in the whole damn world knows that you’re head over heels for Kozume, so it’s not like it matters what _the ladies_ think anyway.”

Kuroo flushes.

“Oh my God, shut _up_ , I am not.”

Daichi raises an eyebrow.

Kuroo maintains his look of indignance for another moment before sighing deeply and sinking into his chair, a look of resignation on his face.

“Okay so maybe I am.  But it’s not like it’s _that_ obvious.”

Daichi looks at him, pity palpable in his expression.  “Dude, I think I could tell even if I lived on the moon.”

 ~

“Kenma!”

The door to the lab flies open with a bang, making Kenma jump in surprise and nearly drop the tweezers he is holding.  He shuts his eyes briefly, steeling himself for whatever this interruption will require, and when he opens them, the magnified face of his idiot best friend appears before him.

“Kuro, can’t you see I’m busy?”

Kuro rolls his eyes.  “Well, _duh_ , but Sawamura was being mean so I came somewhere where my company would actually be appreciated.”

Kenma pushes the magnifying lenses away from his face so he can give Kuro a withering look.  “So you came here.”

Kuro hops up onto the counter next to Kenma’s work space and gives him a winsome smile.

Kenma rolls his eyes and turns back to his workbench.  “Whatever, just don’t bother me, I’m almost finished with my project.”

Kuro perks his head up, eyes wide.  “The one for school or the one for me?  Please tell me it’s the one for me.”

Focused on twisting the naked ends of two wires together, he replies, “The one for you, so if you want me to be able to finish it so I can give it to you, please stop talking.”

From the corner of his eye, Kenma sees Kuro sit up straight and give a mock salute.  “You got it, chief!”

Shaking his head at his best friend’s antics, Kenma turns his attention back towards his work.  He and Kuro have been working on the plans for this device for months, and Kenma thinks that this prototype may just be the one that finally works.  He replaces the wires in their proper spot and seals the opening with the adhesive Kuro perfected last month. “So what was Sawamura being mean to you about?”

“Huh?” Kuro asks confusedly.

“You know,” Kenma asks, now attaching an exo-skin covered in tiny round discs, “you said he was being mean and that’s why you came here. Did you leave a candle burning all night again?”

Kuro makes a noise of indignation.  “Okay that was literally one time, and it’s not like I burned our apartment down, so I would really appreciate it if everyone stopped giving me shit for it!” He takes a deep breath through his nose, regaining his composure.  “But, uh, no, it was – it was something else.”  Kenma’s attention is fully on the device in front of him, otherwise he would see the blush staining Kuro’s cheeks.

“Oh. Okay.” Kenma wonders momentarily about Kuro’s lack of elaboration before deciding that he’ll tell him eventually if it matters, and he gently lays the skin over the last finger. The skin perfectly adheres to the rest of the glove, and he gives the device a last once-over, deeming it complete and pushing away from his desk.

Kuro, seeing Kenma begin to stand, gives a screech of excitement and bounces on Kenma’s desk, his movements making it shake dangerously.  “Is it done? Is it done? Can I test it out pleaaaase Kenma?”

Kenma grabs one of Kuro’s flailing legs and gives him a look. “Only if you promise to stop doing… whatever it is you’re doing right now.”

Kuro immediately stops moving and hops down from his perch on the desk.  “Yep, sorry, I’ll stop right now please give me the gloves now.” Kuro holds his hands out, practically vibrating in anticipation.

Kenma hands the gloves over, and Kuro puts them on, flexing his hands to test the fit.

“They feel good, Kenma. Not to jinx us or anything, but I think we’ve done it.” Kuroo grins broadly at Kenma and cracks his knuckles.  “Now let’s test these bad boys out.”

~

Daichi whooshes out a sigh as soon as the door slams behind Kuroo.  Kuroo has been one of Daichi’s closest friends since coming to Tokyo, but Daichi swears he’s never met a more emotionally exhausting person in his entire life.  He groans and rolls off the couch, padding over to the fridge.  He and Kuroo really need to go grocery shopping because the only things in the fridge are a bottle of sriracha, some dubious-looking leftovers, a single apple, and a mostly-empty half-gallon of milk.  Daichi sighs resignedly and shuts the door. 

He knows the only things in the cabinets are a bag of rice, half a loaf of bread, and Kuroo’s stash of cup ramen, and he’d rather take his chances with the leftovers than eat Kuroo’s food, so he’s going to have to go out for dinner tonight. He grabs his phone from the couch, shoves his feet into a pair of shoes, and grabs his backpack before heading out the door.

The udon restaurant is twenty minutes away on foot, but he doesn’t feel like taking the train, and the weather is quite nice besides, so he puts in his earbuds and makes his way to the restaurant. The walk takes no time at all, and before he knows it, he can see the restaurant ahead, the lights from the neon sign bright against the darkening sky.  He pulls his phone out and begins to wrap his headphones around it, and he pushes open the door of the restaurant with his shoulder.  His mind is still occupied with putting his phone away, so he doesn’t notice the man trying to leave until the door slams into him, causing him to reel backwards and drop the bags he was holding, their contents spilling out onto the floor.

Daichi shoves his phone in his pocket and immediately drops to the ground, picking up a container of udon where it had begun to roll away.  “Jesus, I’m so sorry, I really should’ve been paying better attention.”  Daichi continues to gather the man’s food, putting the containers of udon and chopsticks back into the bags.

“Oh, no, it’s totally okay, I promise! Nothing spilled or anything, otherwise we would’ve had a problem.”  The reassuring voice and the teasing tone are familiar to Daichi, so when he stands up to hand the man his food, he immediately recognizes him and feels his face heat.

“Oh, uh, hey. Funny seeing you here.”

Recognition dawns on the man’s face, and he smiles at Daichi.  “Oh, hi! You’re in my creative writing class, right?” 

Daichi lets out a nervous laugh. “Yep,” he says, voice cracking. He clears his throat, his face growing even hotter. “I sure am.” _Why does this guy have to be so damn handsome?_ His dark jeans cling attractively to his calves, and his blue button-down highlights his grey-brown hair perfectly.  The smile on his face only serves to make him that much more beautiful, and Daichi feels his breath catch in his throat.

“You’re… Sawamura, right?” Daichi feels immense pleasure at this, and the knowledge that the most beautiful person in the world knows his name bolsters his confidence.

“That’s me! And you’re Sugawara, right?” _Sugawara Koushi, also a second year, majoring in Journalism with a minor in English, participates in Model UN, likes cats_. Daichi swallows this information – he really needs to pump the brakes on his social media stalking – and gives Sugawara a warm smile.

“Yep, I am, but, please, call me Suga, everyone does!”

 _Suga._ Daichi briefly thanks whatever gods are out there for giving him this moment. “Oh, okay then! Nice to officially meet you S-Suga! But, uh, I’m so sorry for running into you.”

Suga laughs brightly, and Daichi feels his heart clench. “It’s okay! Maybe next time we see each other we won’t literally run into one another.” He laughs again, and Daichi wishes he could bottle that sound so he could listen to it forever.

Daichi opens his mouth to respond, but a resounding crash from outside makes everyone in the restaurant jump.  Daichi whirls around and sees a massive hole in a building across the street, flames and smoke pouring from inside.  Several people are beginning to run for cover, and shouts of terror fill the air.  Daichi feels for his backpack and almost begins to run out the door before remembering that he’s not alone.  He turns to Suga, whose eyes are wide with fear, and places a hand on his arm.  “Hey, why don’t you get on out of here,” he tells Suga. “It’s gonna get pretty messy, so you’d better get home while you still can.”

Suga nods, brow furrowed in concern.  “Yeah, you’re right.  Gosh, I just wish there was something I could do to help,” he says.

“Oh, yeah, me too,” Daichi says, laughing nervously.  “Well, you’d better get out of here, don’t wanna get stuck when the police close the roads to evacuate everyone.”  He guides Suga towards the door and pulls it open for him. “I hope you get home safely,” he says, giving the other man a small smile. 

Suga returns his smile and says, “You too, Sawamura,” before hurrying out of the shop and down the sidewalk.

As soon as Suga rounds the corner, Daichi runs out of the udon shop and flicks his eyes around, looking for somewhere inconspicuous, before spotting the deserted alley directly adjacent.  He darts into the alleyway and slings his backpack off his shoulders and onto the ground, quickly unzipping it and fishing out the black fabric costume he’d made himself with his mom’s sewing machine the previous summer.  He strips off his clothes and pulls on the costume, securing the cape around his neck and pulling the mask over his eyes.  Daichi readies himself for a moment before flying out of the alley and toward ruined building.

He lands in front of the building and asks the woman standing in front of it if she knew how many people were still inside. She blinks in disbelief at Daichi, slack jawed. “Uh, most of us got out, but I know that there are some people on the upper floors whose exits have been blocked off.”

“Cool, thanks.” Daichi says, and he flies off into the gaping maw of the building.  The smoke is thick, and Daichi immediately pulls the neck of his costume over his mouth and nose.  He flies inward, squinting his stinging eyes against the smoke and the heat, and he sees four smudgy figures through the smoke.  As he approaches, he hears crying, desperate, terrified sobs that echo throughout the destroyed room.  He touches down in front of the four, two men, a woman, and a child, and forces a look of calm confidence onto his face.

“It’s okay, everyone! I’m going to get you out of here!”  The three adults give him looks of wild disbelief. “Just trust me, okay? Can you do that?”  The child still continues to weep, sobs wracking through his small body, and the adults nod. “Take him first,” the woman says hoarsely, so Daichi crouches down in front of the kid and gives him an encouraging smile.

“Hey, buddy, I’m gonna help you, okay?  Can you put your arms around my neck?”  The child sniffles, tear tracks evident on his grimy face, and gives a small nod, putting his arms around Daichi’s neck.  Daichi gently takes off from the ground and flies the kid out of the building, giving him to one of the paramedics that has arrived on the scene.  He is met with bafflement, but the paramedic takes the child anyway, and Daichi turns back to the building.

He is about to take off when he hears a voice from behind him say, “Hey! Is there anything I can do to help?”  Daichi turns around, ready to assure this man that he can handle it, but the words die in his throat when he sees no one behind him.  Daichi looks around, brow furrowed, when a man suddenly appears in front of him, and not in a comes-out-from-the-crowd-way but an appears-from-thin-air way.  Daichi eyes fly wide and his jaw drops, but he slams it shut after a second.  He puts his hands up in a placating gesture and shakes his head.  “Nah, it’s okay, I…” His words trail off as he takes in the man’s appearance.  Also clad in all black, the man’s high-tech suit fits perfectly to his body, from his feet all the way up to his neck.  The palms of his gloves are a shade lighter than the rest of his suit and seem to be made of a different material.  His face is obscured with goggles, but Daichi would recognize the ridiculous hair and cat-like grin anywhere.

“ _Kuroo_?”


	2. shine on a faithful few

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuroo and Daichi have a much-needed conversation, Daichi Suffers, and another hero makes his way onto the scene!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone!
> 
> the response to this fic has already exceeded my wildest expectations (which were something along the lines of "i'll die if i get five kudos") so thanks for the kudos and comments!! i'm probably gonna jinx myself by saying this, but i'm gonna try to get these up once a week. i don't leave for school until the middle of september, so i've got plenty of time to dedicate to this :) i'm not too sure how long this is going to be? i'm not thinking any more than 11 or 12 chapters, but who knows haha
> 
> anyway the chapter title comes from all in white by the vaccines. it doesn't really have much to do with the chapter, but i listened to this album a bunch while writing this chapter.
> 
> you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/biaizawa) at biaizawa and on tumblr [here](https://dickganseyish.tumblr.com) at dickganseyish (hopefully those links work this time lmao)
> 
> it goes without saying, but thank you all so much, and i hope you enjoy!!

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Daichi slurs through a mouth-full of fries. He grabs his Coke from where it sits on the coffee table and takes a gulp. “Your entire family are Extraordinaries?”

“Yep!” Kuroo says, grinning proudly before taking a massive bite into his cheeseburger.

“And your great-grandmother was, what, a superhero?”

“Yeah, and she was a major fucking badass! She’s the whole reason I ever wanted to be a hero!” Kuroo exclaims, gesticulating wildly and almost knocking his soda over in the process. “I didn’t even know anything about it until middle school, when Kenma and I were dicking around in the attic and found a box full of newspaper clippings and shit from when she was alive.”

Daichi and Kuroo had been able to take care of the situation relatively easily, Kuroo’s experience and Daichi’s mobility allowing them to evacuate the building in no time at all. They’d dodged the reporters who’d appeared on the scene, ducking into the alleyway next to the udon shop to get Daichi’s backpack before making their way home. They’d made a brief detour along the way to stop at McDonald's after Daichi’s aborted udon run, attracting odd looks from patrons but eliciting no response from their cashier, who, like most customer service employees, had clearly seen it all. Now they sat on the floor of their living room, food spread out over the coffee table, too hungry to do anything but strip off their masks before tearing into their meal, still covered in soot and grime.

“Speaking of, how _did_ Kozume find out about you?” Daichi asks, dunking a chicken nugget into a container of barbecue sauce.

“I don’t know if you knew this Daichi,” Kuroo leans in conspiratorially, “but I’m the worst liar in the entire world.” Daichi lets out a loud laugh because _he’s so right._

“Besides, Kenma’s like,” Kuroo snags a couple fries from where they’ve fallen on the coffee table and shoves them into his mouth, “the smartest person I know, and he knows me better than anyone, so,” Kuroo shrugs, “it was gonna happen eventually.”

“When did he figure it out?”

“When I was 10. We were neighbors growing up, so it wasn’t easy to hide stuff from him in the first place, but he could tell I was hiding something, you know?” He swallows.

“Kenma’s not really one to pry though, never has been, so I guess he just decided to… watch me? To figure out what my deal was?” Kuroo looks thoughtful, before shrugging. “And he noticed that any time kids brought up Extraordinaries or wanted to play heroes I always sat out, so one day he asked me why I did that, and I freaked out and made up some bullshit excuse that he obviously saw right through, so I just told him the truth and swore him to secrecy.”

“And your parents were just…okay with that?”

“Oh no,” Kuroo laughs, “they were so pissed, oh my God. I’ve never seen my dad so mad.”

Daichi licks the grease off his fingers. “So what’d you do?”

“Well nothing, for a while.” Kuroo wads up his cheeseburger wrapper and tosses it in the bag. “But after I found the pictures of my great-grandma, it kinda… well, it changed everything.”

Daichi remembers his epiphany after the disaster almost three years ago, how it completely turned his world on its head. He gets it.

“So anyway, I told Kenma about my plan,” he continues, “and I’ll never forget the look on his face, holy shit, he thought I had gone completely insane.” Kuroo laughs at the memory.

“But eventually I convinced him to help me!” he punches the air, triumphant. “Well, I still think he only did it because he thought I’d get killed without him,” he deflates slightly, “but whatever,” he finishes.

“Wait, so is Kenma an Extraordinary, too?” Daichi tilts his head.

“Nope! Well, not unless you count him being extraordinarily wonderful!” Kuroo grins winningly at Daichi.

Daichi gives him a flat look.

“Okay well _anyway_ ,” Kuroo huffs, “no, he’s not. He and I just work together on all my gear and stuff. He’s the one who made all this!” Kuroo strikes a suggestive pose, stretching himself out along the floor, propping his head up with one hand and lying the other across his knee.

“Wow. I knew Kozume was smart, but to make that,” Daichi gestures at Kuroo, ignoring his roommate’s current position, “that’s, well… that’s _incredible_.”

“Yeah I know right?” Kuroo rolls onto his back, smiling sappily.

“How’d he do it? I didn’t think that kind of technology even existed!” Daichi is completely floored.

“Well it didn’t, until Kenma invented it,” Kuroo says proudly, sitting up from the floor. “The enhanced night vision lenses, the adaptive surface of my suit, the stuff on my palms and the soles of my feet that let me climb walls, and a whole bunch of other stuff! We were actually testing out these,” he wiggles his fingers, “outside when we heard the explosion, so it’s a good thing they held up, huh?”

An amazed smile breaks out over Daichi’s face. Kozume had made everything _himself_? Daichi he shakes his head in disbelief at the thought that someone like Kozume, an unassuming nineteen-year-old with poorly dyed hair, a hatred of socialization, and an affinity for oversized sweaters, could create something as intricate and advanced as Kuroo’s gear.

“Kenma’s more into, like, technological stuff, though, so I had to figure out how to make my suit disappear with me on my own.” He scratches at a patch of dirt on his forearm. “I analyzed my molecular makeup and incorporated that into the design of the suit. My atoms are a bit different than everyone else’s, so I just had to figure out how to mimic that in a material,” Kuroo tells him, shrugging modestly.

Daichi’s jaw hits the floor. “Dude, since when are you this smart?”

“Since always, you fucker!” Kuroo shouts shrilly, reaching around the table to thwap Daichi on the arm.

“Ow, Jesus, leave me alone, asshole!” Daichi jumps out of Kuroo’s reach, almost tripping over his cape in the process and consequently making Kuroo snicker, and he retreats to the safety of the couch opposite Kuroo.

“God, Daichi, if I have to look at you in that monstrosity for another minute I’m calling the police.” Kuroo scrunches up his nose in disgust.

“What, this?” Daichi tugs at his black jumpsuit. He and Hitoshi had designed it themselves, sewing padding into the inside to provide extra protection, attaching feathers to his mask, even going so far as to create an emblem for the middle of his chest. For weeks, the two had discussed what the logo should be, brainstorming ideas, making mockups, and considering what Daichi wanted to be remembered as. Eventually, they landed on something that was so fitting it seemed like fate, so he and Hitoshi painstakingly embroidered a crow’s foot onto his suit, Daichi’s power of flight and predilection for the bird coalescing to perfectly embody the hero he wanted to be. Although, in retrospect, his outfit didn’t look like much, the care and attention put into every stitch meant too much to Daichi to just throw away.

“No, the other incredibly ugly costume in the room,” Kuroo’s voice drips with sarcasm. “I’ll talk to Kenma, see what he thinks, and I can probably get him to hook you up with a suit too.”

“Wait, really?” Daichi asks eagerly, Kuroo’s transgressions and the supposed sentimental value of his suit forgotten at once.

“Yes, really. He did the same for Koutarou when we started working together, and he actually likes you –” Kuroo twists up one side of his face. “Well, he likes him now, but definitely not at first,” he amends, “but anyway, I bet he’ll do it.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up. Who’s Koutarou?”

“Only the most beautiful and wonderful man to grace the face of the earth,” he sighs dreamily, pressing his hands to his chest.

Daichi feels like he’s missing something. “Wait, what about Kozume?”

“What do you mean, what about Kenma?” Kuroo looks confusedly at Daichi.

“Never mind,” Daichi says quickly. Living with Kuroo has taught him to pick his battles, and this isn’t really something he wants to get into at ass o’clock in the morning while they’re both covered in dried sweat and dirt.

He changes the subject. “So do your parents know about all,” Daichi moves his hands in a vague sort of gesture, “this?”

Kuroo grimaces and shakes his head. “Not so much, no.”

“My parents don’t know either.” Daichi flops back on the couch, laying an arm across his eyes. “They don’t even know that I’m an Extraordinary to begin with, much less that I’m,” he waves his hand in a circular motion, “dressing up in a costume I made myself to go rescue cats from trees and save people from burning buildings.”

Kuroo barks out a laugh. “It does sound pretty ridiculous when you put it that way, doesn’t it?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Daichi chuckles, but the amusement quickly vanishes, his smile sliding from his face. Keeping this from his family has been the hardest thing about it all. Before, Daichi had told his parents everything, but that day in the park had changed everything. He’d since become accustomed to a certain degree of secrecy, but even so, withholding something this important, this major, from his parents has been excruciating.

Kuroo takes in Daichi’s solemn expression and asks gently, brow furrowed in concern, “So am I the only person that knows?”

Daichi rolls onto his side to look at Kuroo, startled out of his reverie. “Oh, um, yeah. Well, you and my younger brother. He, uh, was with me when I found out I could fly. I –” Daichi swallows, remembering. “I saved his life.”

Kuroo’s eyes grow round as saucers. “Wow,” he breathes.

Daichi feels himself flush and scrubs a hand over his face. “I-i-it’s not like it was that big of a deal,” Daichi stammers. “I just –”

Daichi recalls how excited he’d been when his parents told him he was going to have a baby brother. He’d refused to leave Hitoshi’s side from the moment his parents brought him home from the hospital, and the two had been attached at the hip almost from day one. His parents always laughed at the two of them, saying that they’d better enjoy this while it lasted, before Daichi tired of him when he got older, but he never did. His younger brother is smart, and kind, and brave, and Daichi can remember patching him up after he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, cleaning popsicle juice from his chin, throwing snowballs at each other from behind the bushes, and his heart swells with immeasurable love for his little brother. “I just did what I had to,” he says, smiling softly.

“So is that what made you want to be a hero?” Kuroo asks.

“Well, partly, I guess?” Daichi shifts on the couch, putting a hand behind his head. “I mean, that was definitely a factor, but seeing the explosion of that train two years ago is really what did it for me, I think. When I saw the footage of that masked guy, I just knew that I had to stop him.”

After that night, Daichi had become completely obsessed with the mysterious man in black. A cursory internet search had been enough to tell Daichi that there wasn’t any solid information on this guy, so he’d turned to the only resource he had: a second-year on his team who knew way too much about everything. He’d told Daichi that the best way to get illicit information was to search on the dark web, so he’d given Daichi all the information he needed to access those parts of the internet ( _and there’s only like a ten percent chance that someone’ll be able to find you!_ he’d reassured Daichi, who, believe it or not, hadn’t felt all that reassured).

It hadn’t taken much digging at all for Daichi to find forums filled with speculation on the man’s identity. It seemed that the internet had taken to calling him “The Demon”, and it turned out that he and his cronies had been committing smaller crimes all around Tokyo for the past three years or so, each one equally inexplicable in nature. Parking garages mysteriously collapsing, perfectly circular holes appearing in bridges, entire ponds of fish dying suddenly, and a myriad of other unexplainable incidents had occurred across Tokyo, and the only unifying factor was the presence of this masked man.  
The media had, of course, hushed all of them up, as they did with anything involving Extraordinaries, but Daichi and the anonymous forum users were in agreeance that the train explosion had simply been too big to cover up, otherwise it, too, would’ve been swept under the rug, along with all the other evidence pointing to the presence of a sinister villain in Tokyo’s underbelly.

And as for the lack of response from the general public, Daichi attributed it to people acting exactly as they always have: refusing to see the truth, even when it’s staring them in the face.

Daichi hears Kuroo make a noise of surprise.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” Kuroo sits up, looking at Daichi in disbelief. “You’re after the Demon, too?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t exactly gotten very far,” he says bitterly. “I’ve had a couple run-ins with some people who work for him, but they’ve told me jack shit.”

Kuroo nods understandingly, quirking his eyebrows. “Yeah, they’re not the most agreeable lot, that’s for sure. Koutarou and I have managed to learn a little more, but we still know way less than we’d like to,” he says frustratedly, exhaling loudly through his nose.

Daichi knows that feeling all too well.

Something seems to occur to Kuroo, and he smacks himself on the forehead. “Sawamura!” he exclaims. “You should join us!”

“What.”

“You know, be a hero with us!”

Daichi sits up and pulls his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “I don’t know, Kuroo…” he says doubtfully.

“Aw, c’mon Sawamura, you know you wanna!” Kuroo waggles his eyebrows at Daichi, nudging his shin with his foot. “The three of us, working together to stop evil? I can’t think of anything better!”

“I can,” Daichi says darkly.

“C’mon please Sawamura? For me?” Kuroo begs, clasping his hands in front of him beseechingly.

“No.”

Kuroo refuses to be deterred. “What about for the greater good then? Think of all those people out there, completely defenseless, just waiting to be saved…” he trails off, fixing Daichi with a wide-eyed, shaming gaze.

He knows exactly what Kuroo’s doing, he can feel it down to his bones, but damn him if he doesn’t fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

“…okay, fine.”

Kuroo hollers excitedly and leaps to his feet, yanking Daichi off the couch and sweeping him into a bear hug.

Daichi stiffens, refusing to give Kuroo the satisfaction, but he can feel himself give in, and he reluctantly wraps an arm around his roommate, patting him on the back.

Kuroo squeezes him tightly for another moment, then disentangles himself from Daichi. “I’m supposed to meet up with Koutarou tomorrow – our weekly Monday-night stakeout –” Daichi barely resists the urge to roll his eyes, “so you can just come with me!”

“Sounds great!” Daichi smiles falsely at Kuroo, this being the moment when, if this were a mockumentary, he would look into the camera. Kuroo just fixes him with a high-wattage grin and pumps his fist before gathering his trash from the floor and walking into the kitchen.  
Daichi can’t help but feel he’s gotten into something he’s going to regret, but he dusts off the couch where he’d gotten it ashy and picks up his McDonald's bag before following Kuroo into the kitchen.

The two clean up their mess and gather the discarded pieces of their costumes, and as they’re about to go into their respective rooms, Kuroo pauses, hand on his doorknob. “Hey, wait.”  
Daichi turns and looks inquisitively at Kuroo.

“You’ve been doing this since first year, right?”

Daichi thinks back to his first year of school, his horrible roommate with his intrusive questions and tendency to snoop at Daichi’s things when he wasn’t home, and he remembers how he’d been so careful to avoid detection that he hadn’t even had a real costume, just worn black running tights, a black sweatshirt, and a balaclava when he went out at night. Most of the people he’d been trying to save had thought that he was assaulting them, unsurprisingly, so his first year in action hadn’t seen much, well, action.

He winces slightly. “Basically, yeah.”

“So you did this last year too.”

At once, Daichi realizes what his friend is getting at. “How on earth did neither of us notice?”

Kuroo shakes his head. “Beats me. Like, you, I get, with your – your,” he searches for the right word, “ _hyper fixation_ on whatever it is you’re doing. But me?”

Yes, because Kuroo, the guy who thought his crush on Kenma was subtle, the guy who can’t see that his best friend clearly returns his affections, the guy who thinks Daichi watches shitty movies with him because he genuinely enjoys them, is perceptive.

“Whatever you say, Kuroo.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“See you in the morning.” Daichi shuts the door, ignoring his roommate’s indignant squawking on the other side.

~

  
“Now don’t forget, the homework on isomers is due on Monday since our first exam is next Tuesday, so make sure you finish it, otherwise you won’t get to practice them before the exam!” Daichi’s organic chemistry professor erases the dry erase board, and the general clutter of students leaving their seats sounds throughout the room. He shoves his laptop into his backpack, zipping it closed and getting to his feet.

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah, just gimme a sec.” Kuroo finishes writing down a final note before flipping his notebook closed and throwing it in his backpack. He slings his bag over his shoulder and rises, following Daichi out of the classroom.

Daichi’s decision to study medicine meant that he had to take several chemistry classes, classes that, oftentimes, he shared with Kuroo, a chemistry major. Outside the classroom, Kuroo was rambunctious, loud, and mischievous, but in class, he was one of the sharpest students Daichi had ever seen. You’d have to kill Daichi before he’d admit it, but the only reason he survived the first semester of chemistry was because of Kuroo.

The two walk down the hallway, weaving their way through the crush of students and out into the warm sunny June afternoon.

“We’re still meeting your friend tonight, right?” Daichi and Kuroo had both forgotten to set their alarms in the chaos of the previous night, so they hadn’t had time to discuss that evening’s plans over breakfast as they’d hoped to. Instead, Daichi had had to forgo breakfast entirely, sprinting to the station and making it just in time for his second class.

“That’s the plan, yeah!” Kuroo shoots Daichi a grin.

“Have you… told him about me yet?” With Kuroo, there’s no telling, so Daichi figures he’d best prepare for anything.

“Texted him about it this morning.” Kuroo unlocks his phone and taps at it briefly before holding it up for Daichi to see. “He’s pretty stoked.”

He squints at the screen, the glare of the sun making it difficult to see, but he can make out several texts of incomprehensible characters and emojis. “Yeah, I can see that,” Daichi says dryly.

“We’re supposed to meet him around 8 –” Kuroo starts, but he’s interrupted by a shout of, “Sawamura!” from across the green. They shoot each other a confused look before turning to see who it is, and Daichi’s world comes to a screeching halt.

Jogging across the grass, sun lighting his hair from behind like a halo, is Suga, wearing a pair of shorts that show off a tantalizing amount of his defined thighs, and Daichi’s breath catches in his throat.

“Hey, I’m so glad I caught you,” he says, slowing as he approaches. Daichi knows he must look like a deer in headlights, so he composes himself as Suga comes to stand in front of him, taking a deep breath and rubbing his damp palms down the front of his shorts. “I was so worried when you weren’t in class this morning that something happened to you last night!” His eyebrows are furrowed, and his mouth is down-turned at the corners, concern written all over his (beautiful, flawless) face.

Daichi immediately feels like the worst person in the world. “No, I made it home okay, I just –” he does some quick thinking, “got caught up in everything, what with being a witness and all, so I didn’t get home until pretty late last night.” He forces a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “I forgot to set my alarm last night and overslept.”

Suga looks immensely relieved. “Oh, good. Well, not good that you overslept, but good that you made it home okay!” He beams at Daichi, and he barely resists the urge to swoon.

From his left, he hears someone clear their throat, and he startles, whirling around to see Kuroo smirking at him. “You gonna introduce me, Sawamura?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Daichi had entirely forgotten about his roommate. “Oh, uh, sure.” He turns to Suga. “This is my roommate, Kuroo Tetsurou.” Kuroo waggles his fingers at Suga. “And this is Sugawara Koushi. We have creative writing together.”

The significance of this dawns on Kuroo at once ( _of course it does_ ), and his expression turns impish, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “Oh,” he says with feeling, and Daichi curses internally for ever thinking that telling Kuroo about his stupid crush was a good idea. “It is _so_ nice to meet you, Sugawara.” Kuroo shakes his hand and smiles broadly at him. “Sawamura’s told me _so_ much about you.”

So much for being superheroes together, because once Daichi’s done with him, they’ll be finding pieces of Kuroo’s corpse for weeks.

“Really?” Suga sounds pleasantly surprised, and he smiles, wrinkling his nose adorably. God, Daichi is so, so fucked.

“Oh, yeah, like how –”

“Much I admire your writing!” Daichi interjects, cutting Kuroo off with a sharp glance, and he smiles at Suga. “You’re so much better than I am, and I always love it when Hori-sensei asks you to read your stuff aloud.”

He can hear Kuroo start to make a comment, so he elbows him surreptitiously in the stomach, making him double over in pain.

“Oh!” Suga flushes at Daichi’s praise, smiling shyly. “Thank you! I know I’m a journalism major, but I’ve always had such a soft spot for fiction.”

“You could always consider picking up another major or a minor,” Kuroo suggests from his hunched-over position, voice slightly strained. He clears his throat and straightens up. “That’s what Ke – uh, my friend did.”

“You know, that is a pretty good idea…” Suga trails off, considering. “I’ll definitely have to think about it, at the very least!”

Having spent this long in direct exposure to Suga’s brightness, Daichi can feel himself growing manic as the seconds pass, and he knows he’s gotta split before he says (or does) something he might regret, like blurting out how pretty Suga looks in the sun or how he wants him to fu – _nope_ , he’s not even going to let himself finish that train of thought.

“Hey, Kuroo, we should probably get going, huh?” He looks at his roommate pointedly, widening his eyes. “We don’t want to keep Suga for too long.”

 _Suga?_   Kuroo mouths at Daichi, looking suggestively at him.

“Oh, wait, Sawamura, I almost forgot the other reason I wanted to talk to you!” Suga slides one of the straps of his backpack off his shoulder and pulls it in front of him. He rummages around for a moment before finding what he wants and pulling it out with a flourish, presenting it to Daichi. “When I noticed you weren’t in class, I figured you’d want the notes, so I made this for you!” he says brightly.

Daichi takes the proffered sheet of paper, scanning his eyes down the page. Suga has written down the day’s notes in meticulous detail, color-coding each of the topics with different colored pens, and taken care to mark down a homework assignment due for Friday at the top of the sheet. Looking at Suga’s neat, rounded penmanship and the obvious attention that went into this, Daichi can feel his brain short-circuit.

Kuroo takes in Daichi’s blank expression and claps him roughly on the back.

Right. Words. Those tricky bastards. “Th-thanks, Suga,” he coughs, face hot.

“You’re welcome!” Suga looks slightly alarmed but smiles warmly at him all the same.

Kuroo can see Daichi is spent, so he winks at Suga. “It was nice to meet you, Sugawara!”

“You too, Kuroo! I’ll see you Wednesday, Sawamura?” Suga looks inquiringly at Daichi, who nods. And nods. And keeps nodding. He dimly feels Kuroo grab him around the bicep, and he allows himself to be dragged away.

When they’re a good distance away and Daichi has somewhat regained his sense of awareness, he puts his face in his hands. “Fuck me,” he groans, voice muffled, “why am I like this?”

Kuroo pats him consolingly on the back. “And I thought I was supposed to be the gay disaster.”

~

Later that evening, Daichi has mildly recovered from the most embarrassing moment of his life, but the only thing he really wants to do is stay in bed all night, eating ungodly amounts of ice cream and wallowing in self-pity. Unfortunately for him, he told Kuroo he’d come with him to meet his friend, so he rouses himself from his cave of shame and starts getting ready.

He isn’t too concerned with his appearance, since he assumes he’ll be wearing his hero costume for most of the night, and he throws on a pair of running shorts and a crew neck. His costume lies in a crumpled heap at the foot of his bed where he’d chucked it last night before rolling into bed and dying. He picks it up and gives it a tentative sniff, and he recoils in horror from the oppressive odor of sweat and smoke. He glances over his shoulder to look at the clock, sighing when it shows ten minutes until he and Kuroo are supposed to leave. Great.

There’s no time for Daichi to do anything other than spritz some cologne onto it and hope for the best, and he shoves his suit into his backpack before making his way into the living room. Kuroo sits on the couch, focused on the game he’s playing on his DS, but he looks up when he sees Daichi enter the room, flipping it closed with a snap.

“Ready for this?” Kuroo grins excitedly at him.

“As I’ll ever be.”

They make it to Koutarou’s in no time at all, the subway ride taking little more than fifteen minutes, and before Daichi knows it, they’re standing outside a ground-floor apartment in a nice residential area. Kuroo fishes around in his pockets and pulls out a set of keys, taking one and unlocking the door to the apartment. He knocks as he opens the door, calling, “Bo? We’re here!”

Daichi hears footsteps from down a hallway, and he’s just shutting the door behind him when a tall man with hair to rival Kuroo’s comes bounding into the room.

“Tetsu!” he shouts, making Daichi wince, and he runs over to wrap Kuroo into a hug. Kuroo embraces the man tightly, lifting him off his feet as they laugh happily. Kuroo sets him down, planting a smacking kiss on his cheek, and they pull apart, turning to face Daichi, who has been watching with a mix of amusement and bewilderment. Kuroo puts his arm around his friend, who snakes an arm around Kuroo’s waist, and the man looks at Daichi with interest.

“This him?”

“In the flesh.”

Daichi, feeling scrutinized, gives an awkward wave. “Hey.”

The gray and white-haired man sticks out his hand. “Bokuto Koutarou,” he beams. “Nice to meet you!”

“Sawamura Daichi.” He shakes Bokuto’s hand. “And, uh, same.”

Kuroo and Bokuto move towards the couch, so Daichi follows them into the living room, plopping down on the sofa next to them. He takes in the well-decorated space and the photos lining the walls, but his attention is redirected before he gets the chance to examine them further.

“Did you see the news this afternoon?” Bokuto directs this question to the both of them. So they’re diving right into it, then. Kuroo and Daichi shake their heads, so Bokuto grabs the remote from where it sits on an end table and turns on the tv. Paused on the screen is a report from earlier in the day, and Bokuto resumes the broadcast.

“The explosion in Suginami last night was originally attributed to a gas leak, but security footage shows that something far darker was at play.” Black and white footage of the front of the building appears on screen. The scene is empty for a few moments, but suddenly, a man dressed in all black, wearing a Kabuki mask appears, seemingly from midair. Daichi’s blood boils at the sight of him.

 _It’s the Demon_.

Just as he had done in the tapes from the train explosion, he stretches his hand out in front of him, only this time, a bright light explodes from his open palm. The security footage cuts out momentarily, and when the recording resumes, the man is gone, and the building is in flames.

“As you can see, the same man thought to be responsible for the explosion on the Yamanote Line has reappeared after over two years of silence. His resurfacing suggests the possibility of further attacks in the future, so we urge you to remain aware and –” The newscaster’s voice is cut off as Bokuto switches the tv off. Bokuto’s jaw is set, his eyes alight with rage, and Kuroo puts a comforting hand on his knee.

“We’re gonna get him.”

“I know.” Bokuto looks at Kuroo gratefully, and he whooshes out a breath through his mouth before turning to Daichi, all traces of his anger gone.

“So!” he says brightly. “Tetsu here tells me that you wanna be a hero!”

Daichi is caught off guard by the sudden change in mood, and it takes a moment for his brain to catch up with his tongue. “Uh, yeah,” he nods.

“Awesome! Welcome to the club! Tetsu and I can kick some major ass, so I hope you can keep up!” He rises to his feet and moves towards the door. He opens the door and holds it open with an expectant grin. “Well?”

Daichi looks in confusion between him and Kuroo. “What?”

Kuroo goes to join Bokuto at the door. “C’mon, Sawamura, we’ll fill you in on the way.” He cracks his knuckles, grinning confidently. “We’ve got some justice to serve.”


	3. started from the bottom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daichi gets the surprise of his life, things don't go as planned, and Kenma saves the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, everyone! this chapter was... a struggle to write, so sorry if some of it doesn't make sense or sounds weird. i've been feeling very self-conscious about my writing lately, so i hope this chapter turned out okay! they're getting longer by the chapter, so don't be surprised if i turn out a 10000 word update sometime in the future haha
> 
> the chapter title comes from "started from the bottom" by drake, a song i don't even like, but it fit pretty well i thought because even superheroes have to start somewhere, right? as always, thanks for reading, and i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> social media!!  
>  [tumblr](https://dickganseyish.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/biaizawa)

Daichi follows Bokuto and Kuroo down the street as they chatter amicably a few paces ahead of him. They had not fulfilled their promise to fill him in on the way, silencing his protestations against being left in the dark by telling him to “wait until we get there!”, so Daichi quietly trails along behind them, taking in the passing scenery as they approach… wherever _there_ is.

They’re headed in the opposite direction of the station, the buildings getting more worn-down by the block, streetlamps shining dirty yellow light on the cracked sidewalk, and Daichi feels despair sink further into him every step he takes. What on earth has he gotten himself into? Bokuto and Kuroo seem awfully eager, though, so for now, he lets their idle conversation wash over him and tries to keep his uneasiness at bay.

“I take it you still haven’t told Akaashi where you really go on Monday nights.” Kuroo states this more than asks it. He turns toward Bokuto, the expression on his shadowed face unreadable.

The horns of his hair seem to wilt. “No,” he admits. “I just – you know what Keiji’s like, I don’t want him to worry.”

Keiji?

Kuroo sighs. “Bo, you know I love you, but that’s such a stupid reason to keep this from him. He already knows about the – the _heroing_ or whatever, I don’t see how him knowing about this changes anything.”

“Okay yeah, but he doesn’t know we go out once a week every week to find that bastard who –” Bokuto growls the last few words before cutting himself off, and although Daichi can’t see his face, the tightness of Bokuto’s shoulders is enough to tell him how furious the Demon makes him.

“Yeah, and don’t you think he’d like to find out from you and not, say, the news?”

Bokuto doesn’t say anything to this, letting his silence do all the talking for him. Apparently Kuroo’s words have done the trick. Kuroo claps him on the shoulder, and Daichi can see the tension start to drain from his body and his hair perk up to its usual height.

“I hope you know how fucking lucky you are to have me,” Kuroo says, and Daichi can hear the smirk in his voice. He’s almost relieved to hear it – seeing Kuroo be serious twice in one night has not been good for Daichi’s heart.

Bokuto loops an arm through Kuroo’s, leaning over to mutter something Daichi can’t quite hear that makes Kuroo cackle, and they walk onward, Daichi the outward observer to this display of affection. He treads along behind them, feeling as though he’d intruded into something private. Bokuto clearly cares about… Akaashi? Keiji? Daichi decides to stick with the name Kuroo used. For all he knows, Akaashi could be anyone from Bokuto’s roommate to his boyfriend, judging from how he and Kuroo speak about and treat each other, so Daichi just chalks it up as one of those things he’s never going to pretend to be able to understand and follows his friends down the street.

A few minutes later, Kuroo and Bokuto stop in front of a large, squat building. Daichi walks up to stand beside them, eyeing the building with interest. It appears to be a warehouse, the vines creeping up the sides and the long-since faded paint indicators of its disuse, other similar-looking buildings flanking it on either side. The windows are almost opaque with dirt, the steps leading up to the door crumbling and worn, but, oddly enough, the door hinges gleam in the moonlight, not a trace of rust or wear on them.

Kuroo approaches the door, lifting the cover from the keypad above the handle. Daichi gives Bokuto a questioning look, who only elbows him excitedly in the ribs and raises his eyebrows in Kuroo’s direction, and Daichi turns back to see Kuroo – place his thumb on the fingerprint scanner that was under the cover? Wait, _what_? The lock snicks softly, and Kuroo holds open the door for Daichi.

“After you, good sir.” He gives Daichi a sweeping bow. He blinks, frozen in disbelief, and Bokuto chuckles quietly, shoving him up the stairs and through the doorway. He stumbles across the threshold, grabbing the doorframe with a hand to steady himself, and it takes a second for his brain to catch up with his eyes because he can’t believe what he’s seeing. _Holy shit_.

A massive room stretches out before him, the walls covered floor to ceiling with a thick, sturdy-looking gunmetal gray material. In one corner, a cozy sectional couch covered with pillows and throw blankets sits tucked up in a corner, a television with a couple gaming consoles hooked up to it sitting cattycorner on the coffee table, plush rug spread out underneath it. Along the same wall, he spies a stove, a microwave, and a refrigerator, as well as one of those arcade-style basketball shooting games, which seems a bit unnecessary, but Daichi supposes when he gets his own secret lair, he can put whatever he wants in it.

The wall opposite is lined with tables not unlike those you might find in a chemistry lab, the lights overhead glinting faintly off the dark worktops. Various apparatus sit on the surfaces, some of which – things like test tubes, Bunsen burners, distillation equipment – Daichi recognizes from his hours spent in chem and bio lab, others – a large oblong box with a glass hood, a device with a couple protrusions sticking out from the wall to hang over the table, a small tool that somewhat resembles a screwdriver with a mysteriously shaped tip and a switch on the handle – remaining a complete mystery to him.

On the far end of the warehouse, a space is cordoned off with mesh dividing curtains, punching bags, a pit filled with foam cubes, monkey bars, and all manner of things used to train filling the area. To the left, further down from the couch and miniature kitchen, stands a wide curved desk facing several screens. They show feeds from what appear to be various areas across the city, Daichi recognizing one of them as the alley behind the building that the Demon demolished yesterday, and a computer monitor rests in the middle of the desk, screensaver showing a horrible picture of Bokuto in the middle of a sneeze, and Daichi covers his mouth with his hand, stifling a laugh.

However, the thing that most catches Daichi’s eye is a large rolling whiteboard like you’d find in a classroom, photos and documents connected with red string covering its face. He feels drawn to it like a moth to a flame, pulled toward it almost against his will. He hears Bokuto and Kuroo follow him, footsteps echoing faintly as they approach the board. He examines the board, photographs of suspects and possible allies, newspaper clippings, web articles, and other relevant data stuck to it with small round magnets, and he feels a hand come up and shut his mouth from where it had been agape without him noticing.

“Pretty sweet, right?” Kuroo nudges Daichi in the side, grinning smugly at him.

Daichi turns to look at his friend, the shock he feels written all over his face. “I’m so sorry for doubting you!” He bows deeply, body making a right angle, and Kuroo and Bokuto laugh.

“Nah, my dude, you’re good,” Kuroo assures him. “You should’ve seen Akaashi’s face when we brought him here after we finished setting everything up.”

Bokuto laughs loudly. “Keiji’s not surprised easily, but I thought he was gonna _die!_ ”

“How did you guys make this place?” Daichi straightens up and casts another sweeping look around the room, and wow, would you look at that, it’s even more impressive the second time.

“Well, we didn’t make it so much as find it,” Bokuto tells him matter-of-factly. “Kuroo and I were out patrolling one night our first year of college, like,” he turns to him inquiringly, “a couple months after we decided to become heroes?”

Kuroo nods affirmatively. “Yeah, and we stumbled on this. We think it’s probably left over from when Extraordinaries were still accepted in society because most of the shit in here was outdated and _disgusting_.”

“I thought we were gonna get black lung from all the fucking dust, I swear I’ve never seen so much in my life.” Bokuto shudders, haunted.

“But the foundations were solid, and the stuff in here was super rad, so we got Kenma to help us update it all and add a few new things, and –” Kuroo sweeps his arms wide, “voila! The coolest sanctum you’ve ever seen!”

Kuroo has an extremely self-satisfied smile on his face, which Daichi would normally hit him for, but seeing as, for once, it’s completely justified, he decides to let it slide.

“So, what do you guys usually do? Just hunt for the Demon or what?” Daichi walks around the whiteboard and towards the monitors.

“Partly, yeah,” Bokuto says, coming up to stand beside him. “That’s what all this is for.” He gestures towards the screens. “We’ve got them set to places the Demon’s been sighted, and the computer automatically logs any mention of him anywhere on the internet.”

“Anything important goes up there,” Kuroo adds, pointing to the whiteboard, “and anything irrelevant –”

“Also known as 90% of the information we get,” Bokuto mutters.

“Goes in here.” Kuroo steps aside to reveal a very full trashcan.

“But we also help people out around the city, stopping robberies, preventing muggings, rescuing people who’ve been in car crashes, things like that!” Bokuto gives Daichi a double thumbs up.

Daichi nods appreciatively. “And I’m assuming all the sciency stuff is Kenma’s, right?”

“For the most part. The complicated looking shit is his, but we both use the normal stuff.”

“And this is where we train!” Bokuto bounds to the back of the warehouse, waving his arms excitedly. “We sucked at using our powers at first, so we sparred and practiced back here!”

“New gear doesn’t always…” He winces. “Cooperate, either, so we do test runs in here too!”

“What about that?” Daichi gestures at the couch and tv.

Kuroo and Bokuto turn to each other, then shrug. “We get bored.”

That’s fair.

A harsh crackling emits from the direction of the screens, startling the three of them from their impromptu tour. Kuroo jogs to the desk and fiddles with a couple dials on a police scanner that had previously gone unnoticed, the signal clearing and the voice of the officer becoming understandable.

“– armed robbery at the 7-Eleven in Nakano San-Chōme, two male assailants. They’ve barricaded the doors until the employees cooperate.”

“That’s not far from here,” Kuroo says thoughtfully, and he and Bokuto turn to Daichi, expectant grins on their faces. “What do you say, Sawamura? Ready to kick some ass?”

Daichi gives them a weak smile. “Uhh, I guess?”

“Hell yeah!” Bokuto high fives him before slapping the watch on his left arm. Daichi watches in amazement as a suit unfolds itself from the watch, covering Bokuto like a second skin. Unlike Kuroo and Daichi’s suits, Bokuto’s is a mottled grey-brown, and it covers him from foot to neck. Hastily, Daichi rips open his backpack and puts on his suit, tying his cape snugly around his neck, feeling immensely inadequate in the face of such remarkable technology. When he finishes, he turns to see Kuroo and Bokuto in their full suits, neither Kuroo’s goggles nor Bokuto’s feathered mask doing anything to hide their snickering.

“Shut up, I _know_ , okay?”

“Kenma and Keiji are gonna have a field day when they see him!” Bokuto howls, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye.

Daichi crosses his arms defensively. “Haha, yeah, it’s hilarious, now can we please go?”

“Hey, I promised you justice, didn’t I?” Kuroo assures him before vanishing. Daichi is really going to have to start getting used to that.

“Last one there buys the others as much ramen as they want!” Bokuto shouts gleefully before zipping outside, his speed creating a breeze that blows Daichi’s hair. That’s his power sorted, then.

“Ugh, no fair, Bo, I always lose!” Kuroo’s voice sounds from somewhere near the entrance, fading as he presumably chases Bokuto to the scene.

“Guys, wait up!” Daichi cries, flying out the door, which slams shut behind him, but Kuroo and Bokuto are both long gone, leaving him to hover outside the warehouse alone.

“I don’t even know where the 7-Eleven is!” he calls, voice echoing around the empty street. “And who’s Keiji?!”

~

A couple minutes later, Daichi touches down outside the convenience store, the shapes of cowering people silhouetted through the glass. He wipes the sweat from his brow and approaches Bokuto where he kneels to the side of the door. Kuroo is nowhere to be seen, but whether that means he’s the last one there or is simply using his power, Daichi doesn’t know.

“Hey, you made it!” Bokuto stage whispers, grinning at Daichi.

“I had to use my phone to figure out where to go since you guys left me in the dust,” Daichi gives Bokuto a pointed look, who winces apologetically, “but I’m here at least.”

“Koutarou, my wallet can’t take much more of this!” Kuroo groans from somewhere behind them, popping into sight when they turn to look at him.

“Sorry, bud, them’s the breaks.”

Kuroo crouches down next to them, panting slightly. “Well it’s not fair!” he whisper-yells at Bokuto. “You’re _literally_ faster than a speeding bullet, and Sawamura over here,” he thumbs aggressively at Daichi, “actually travels as the crow flies, this is blatant homophobia.”

Bokuto leans his head back and laughs. “Shut up, Tetsu.”

“ _You_ shut up, asshole!” Kuroo reaches around Daichi to shove at Bokuto, knocking him sideways. He scrambles up and lunges at Kuroo, but Daichi puts a hand on their chests, forcing them apart.

“Is this really the time?” he snaps.

“…No,” they say quietly, cowed. They look at him guiltily, and Daichi allows himself his irritation for another moment before shaking it off. They’ve got more important things to worry about than a stupid argument.

“What’s the plan?” he murmurs.

“I sneak in through the back, cause a distraction, you and Bo come in from behind and –” Kuroo socks a fist into his palm, “while I evacuate the civilians! It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“And the cops aren’t here yet, which is a huge plus,” Bokuto adds. “They’re absolutely useless even on the best of days.”

Daichi’s brain struggles to keep up. “Okay, wait, so we’re just going in? Just like that?”

“Yep!” Kuroo and Bokuto give him twin thumbs ups.

Oh boy.

Kuroo smacks him heartily on the back, knocking him off balance. “Let’s fucking do this thing!” He and Bokuto fist bump, and he blinks out of sight.

“And now we wait.” Bokuto sits back on his heels, leaning his head against the glass of the 7-Eleven.

“Wait for what?” Daichi’s beginning to suspect the only emotion he’s capable of feeling is bewilderment.

“The distraction! He’s supposed to cause a commotion and then we swoop in and save the day!” Bokuto makes a diving motion with one of his hands before bringing it up to grip Daichi’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be so nervous! Everything is gonna be totally fine!”

Everything was not totally fine.

Soon after Bokuto and Daichi had made their way into the 7-Eleven, the situation had become total chaos. Kuroo had successfully evacuated the trapped customers and employees, but the police report had failed to mention that the robbers were Extraordinaries. One of them seemed to have an ability that allowed him to blow massive gusts of wind from his mouth, the other able to shoot projectiles from his fingers, and it was all the boys could do to keep their footing, much less land any attacks.

Daichi hangs on to a shelf as the robber empties his lungs, the items on the shelves long since blown away. He can feel his fingers slipping further by the second as bags of shrimp chips and melon bread fly past him, his sweaty hands not helping in the slightest. He searches the room for his friends, spying the blur he presumes to be Bokuto encircling the other criminal, cutting off his air supply with his speed, and he watches as Kuroo appears behind his assailant, kicking him in the back.

Daichi falls to the floor with a thud, taking a moment to catch his breath. He hasn’t even thrown a punch since an initial attack on the wind Extraordinary, but he’s already completely exhausted. He readies himself to rejoin the fray, which Bokuto and Kuroo seem to have mostly under control, but he hears Kuroo’s voice shout, “Daichi, look out!” Before he can even look up, something hard hits him sharply on the head, and everything goes black.

~

Kenma wakes slowly, a cheerful melody trickling its way into his consciousness. It’s late, so late that you could almost call it early, and he cracks open an eye, searching for the source of the offending noise: it’s his phone. He grabs it from where it lies in his bed, holding it a few inches from his face, squinting against the brightness of his screen in the pitch of his room. It’s a number he doesn’t have in his contacts, so he throws it down next to him and rolls back over.

The ringing (finally, blessedly) stops, and Kenma barely has time to breath a sigh of relief before his ringtone starts again. He lies in the dark, deliberating whether or not to pick up. If he doesn’t answer, whoever it is might keep calling until he picks up. If he does answer, he’ll probably have to tell someone they’ve got the wrong number and get to go back to sleep. Deciding to place his bets on the second option, he swipes his finger across the screen and puts the phone up to his ear.

“…hello?” he mumbles blearily, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“ _Kenma_!” his best friend shouts on the other end, making Kenma jerk away from the phone. Kuro never calls – he knows Kenma hates phone calls – and Kenma feels dread sink into his bones, wishing now more than ever that he’d just ignored the call.

“What did you do.”

Kuro laughs sheepishly. “ _There was… a bit of an incident_.”

Yep, Kenma should have thrown his phone out the window when he had the chance.

“ _Bo, Sawamura, and I were out, uh, doing our usual Monday night thing, and there was this robbery_ ,” he says, voice tinny through the phone.

Kenma blinks in surprise. So Sawamura is an Extraordinary, too.

“ _And we tried to help out, but apparently “vigilante justice” isn’t “tolerated”_ ,” he grumbles, air quotes audible in his voice, “ _and we also kind of wrecked the store, so we might have gotten arrested_?”

Kenma pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “Where are you?”

“ _The police station outside Nakano Station_?” Kenma can’t even see his face, and he can hear the guilty smile Kuro is undoubtedly wearing. He sighs. So much for being able to go back to sleep.

“You do know that’s like a thirty-minute walk from my apartment, right?” Tokyo may be a city on the move, but the trains still stop running around one in the morning. It’s usually not a problem – even when Kenma has late nights at the lab, he just crashes with Kuro and Sawamura, who live in the same ward, but, right now, he’s really wishing the trains ran all night.

“ _Kenma I know, but we need someone to bail us out, and you’re the only person I could call_ ,” he whines, dragging out the last word. He might be right, but that doesn’t mean Kenma has to like it.

“Fine, whatever. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“ _Oh my God, Kenma, you’re_ –”

“The best. I know,” he says, dead-pan. “Try not to get into any more trouble until I get there.” He ends the call, promptly silencing off his friend’s protestations.

Kenma almost wishes he were a more selfish person, a person who could easily have told his dearest and oldest friend to go fuck himself and gone back to sleep. Kenma’s a lot of things, but a bad friend isn’t one of them, especially when it comes to Kuro. He might hate to admit it, but there isn’t much he wouldn’t do where Kuro is concerned.

Kenma sits up, stretching as he does so. He swings his legs over the side of his bed and unlocks his phone, using the light of the screen to find the blurry shape of his glasses on the bedside table. Shoving them inelegantly onto his face, he shines his phone towards the floor. Spying an overlarge sweatshirt that definitely used to be Kuro’s and a pair of shorts, he stumbles towards them and dresses quickly in the dark, shoving his phone into his back pocket.

Making his way down the hall, he almost steps on his cat, asleep by the front door. She meows in protest when Kenma picks her up to get to his shoes.

“Sorry, Sakura,” he murmurs, genuinely regretful. He and Kuro had gone through an intense Naruto phase during high school, so, really, this had been the only choice for her name.

He stuffs his sockless feet into his shoes, checking his pockets for the essentials – wallet, keys, phone – and he gives himself a once-over in the mirror next to the key rack. Ordinarily, Kenma can’t be bothered with appearances, but when you’re going to bail your idiot friends out of jail, there’s a certain standard you have to uphold. His clothes match, a miracle feat after having dressed in the dark, but his hair is sticking up in all directions, giving Kuroo’s bedhead a run for its money. He scrapes his hair back into a ponytail, and, deeming himself presentable and not deranged, opens the door.

“I’ll be back later,” he tells his cat, locking the door behind him before making his way to his friends’ rescue.

Roughly thirty minutes later, Kenma reaches the entrance of the police station. Making his way through the sliding glass door and up to the reception counter, he mentally rehearses what he’s going to say to the receptionist. _Hey, I’m here to bail out three of my friends, they’re probably wearing catsuits and covered in blood. Don’t worry, they’re not crazy, just really stupid._ God, he’s gonna be thrown right into jail with them.

Dreading the conversation he’s about to have, he rings the bell on the counter. After a few moments, he hears the distant sound of clacking heels, getting louder as the person he assumes to be the receptionist approaches the counter. A door opens from behind the glass, and an older woman takes a seat at the desk. “How can I help you?” she asks, voice pleasant.

He clears his throat nervously. “Um, I’m here to pick up my friends? They’re about my age, tallish, two of them have this hair –” Judging by the woman’s expression, she knows exactly who he means, and he stops talking.

“Oh. _Those_ three.” She gives him a tight little smile. Oh yeah, she definitely knows who he means. Kenma nods reluctantly.

“I just need you to sign some release papers, and I’ll take you back to them.”

She slides a few forms through the slot in the bottom of the window. Kenma grabs a pen, filling out the necessary information and providing his signature where indicated. She glances over them after he returns them, and she presses a button to her right, a harsh buzzer sounding as the door unlocks.

“Just step through here and follow me,” she says, pushing her chair back and exiting through the door behind her.

As soon as Kenma opens the door, he can hear someone shouting angrily from down the hall. The receptionist joins him momentarily, irritation covering her face, and he follows her towards the holding cells. As they round the corner, Kenma sees Sawamura yelling, face furious and red, at a cowering Bokuto and Kuro.

“– can’t believe I actually let you two talk me into this! We could’ve died! Or gotten other people killed are you _fucking kidding me_?” He takes a breath through his nose, pupils dilated and nostrils flared, giving Kenma the mental image of a charging bull. “Not to mention how we rushed in without a plan! When we get out of here, I’m gonna –”

What he is going to do, though, they’ll never know, because Kuro chooses this moment to look up, and, seeing Kenma approach, jumps up and runs to the front of the cell.

“Oh my God, Kenma, thank you, you’re my savior,” he cries. He reaches for Kenma through the bars, who swats his hand away.

“Stop that.”

As an officer unlocks the cell, Kenma takes a moment to look at his friends. Kuro and Bokuto had obviously collapsed their suits, as they’re wearing their street clothes, but Sawamura, clearly using a suit of his own making, looks ridiculous standing with his hands on his hips in a rumpled black jumpsuit _and_ _is that a cape?_ , his anger making him look all the more comical. Kenma coughs to hide the laugh threatening to escape.

“Kenmaaaa,” Kuro wails as he exits the cell, running over and wrapping his arms tightly around Kenma. He presses his cheek against Kenma’s hair, making some of it fall out of the ponytail to hang around his face. “What would I do without you?”

Kenma feels his face grow warm. He hides a smile in Kuro’s t-shirt but forces his voice into a neutral tone.

“Die, probably.”

He indulges himself in a few more moments of Kuro’s warmth before extricating himself from his grip to face the other two delinquents. Bokuto bounds out of the cell and takes Kenma’s hands in his.

“Kenma, you’ve saved us, I love you!”

“You should just be glad I didn’t tell Keiji about this,” he retorts, smiling blandly at him.

His mood takes a dramatic downward turn, his body visibly drooping. “Oh noooo,” he moans, “he’s gonna be so mad at me.”

Kuro wraps a comforting arm around his shoulder. “Chin up, dude. He can’t be mad forever.”

“Yeah, but have you ever been on the receiving end of one of his silent treatments? Shit hurts, bro.”

The receptionist takes them back to the lobby, and Sawamura falls into place beside him, leaving Kuro to comfort Bokuto behind them.

“Thanks, Kozume,” he says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kenma looks up at him through the hair that has fallen down around his face. “Oh, uh, no problem.”

“How did they get you into this, anyway?” He asks curiously. Of all the potential people to get involved with Bokuto and Kuro’s antics, Sawamura was one of the ones Kenma would have least expected.

“They seduced me with their sparkly lair and talks of justice,” he replies dryly. “And then we got arrested. Welcome to my life.”

Poor Sawamura. If he thinks this is the worst of it, he’s in for a big surprise.

They walk back out into the lobby, the receptionist resuming her post behind the glass. “Kozume-san already signed the release papers, and no one is pressing charges, but the three of you will be receiving a bill in the mail for the damages caused to the 7-Eleven tonight. Expect it within the next few weeks,” she states all of this plainly, as if she had read it from a script.

The four of them take this news quietly, performing quick mental calculations of exactly how much that bill is going to be. Before anyone can protest, Kenma mutters a thank you to the receptionist, giving her a quick bow, and walks outside into the warm night air.

He whooshes out a breath through his mouth, shoving his hands into his sweatshirt pocket. He hadn’t realized it until now, but simply being inside, with the bright lights and the stimulation and the lateness of the hour, had completely drained him, leaving him more exhausted than ever. He hears the three join him outside, jumping when Kuro drapes an arm around his shoulders.

“I’m gonna walk Kenma home, you two go on without me,” he says, waving them on.

“I’ve gotta get my bag from the warehouse anyway,” Sawamura says, “so I’ll see you at home, Kuroo.”

“Race ya?” Bokuto gets into a runner’s position, looking up at Sawamura eagerly.

He looks at Kuro and Kenma, then shrugs. “I think this might be the concussion talking, but what the hell?”

Not giving Bokuto time to even respond, he takes to the air and flies off, his form soon lost in the darkness.

“I’m gonna get you, Sawamura!”

Bokuto streaks off into the night, and, almost immediately, he, too, disappears from sight, leaving Kuro and Kenma alone, the chirping of the cicadas their only company.

“You know you don’t have to walk me home,” he says, removing Kuro’s arm from around him and making in the direction of his apartment. “I made it here fine.”

“Yeah, I know. I just want to, ‘s all.” Kuro smiles, bumping him gently with his shoulder.

They walk in silence. Kuro and Kenma have been just that – _Kuro-and-Kenma_ – for so long that conversation isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, they can say more with a glance than they ever could with words. The two of them are a pair of planets, each a unique body following its own orbits but, ultimately, revolving around the same sun. He and Kuro are different, almost as opposite as two people can be, but, for whatever reason, when Kuro saw him sitting alone in his backyard that day so many years ago, he decided to stay.

Kenma looks at his friend keeping pace beside him, moonlight illuminating his face. Kuro has always been handsome, with his strong features and athletic build, but in this moment, with the gentle night breeze tugging at his hair and starlight behind him, he’s beautiful.

This realization nearly knocks Kenma off his feet. His feelings for his best friend are something he’d prefer to keep under lock and key for the rest of his life, but when they’ve developed to this point, when something as simple as looking at Kuro makes his heart skip a beat, they’re getting harder and harder to repress. Kenma feels the urge to say something, _anything_ , to ease the tension in his chest. After a moment, he breaks the quiet.

“So Sawamura, huh?”

Kuro seems caught off guard by the suddenness of his question. “Oh, uh, yeah, I know right?” He chuckles. “Never woulda thought Sawamura Daichi, dad of the year, would wanna be a superhero.”

“How did he find out about you?”

“How do you know I didn’t tell him?”

Kenma gives him a look.

“Okay, yes, he found out. It was when we were testing the gloves out, and we heard that big explosion?”

Kenma recalls. It had been so loud, he’d felt it in his chest.

“Well, when I went to see what I could do to help, I ran into another hero, and it was Sawamura! I didn’t realize it was him, but he recognized me right away. Dunno how, but he did.”

Leave it to Kuro to be entirely self-unaware. His hair alone is a dead giveaway.

Kenma lets it be – he’s far too tired to deal with this right now. “So you, what, recruited him to join your and Bokuto’s crack team of heroes?”

Kuro makes an affronted noise. “Uh, first of all, it’s not a crack team, we’ve got sick-ass suits, gear, _and_ a hideout,” he counts on his fingers, “but yeah, he’s gonna work with us now. He’s after the Demon anyway, so teaming up just made sense.”

Kenma hums affirmatively.

“We’re definitely gonna have to work on his fighting skills, though, because he got his lights punched out.” Kuro winces in sympathy.

Kenma remembers what Kuro had been like when he first got the idea in his head to become a superhero. He hadn’t told anyone other than Kenma, going out alone to stop crime or save people or whatever it was he did back then. Kenma had been the one to patch him up after bad fights, bandaging his ribs, sewing up deep cuts in his arms, and putting concealer on his bruises to hide them from his parents. They’ve come a long way since then (thankfully, since Kenma quickly tired of playing nurse), Kenma now with far more medical knowledge than he ever thought he’d have and Kuro finally learning to put his thumb outside his fist when punching, among other things.

Something occurs to Kenma. “Doesn’t Bokuto have a friend who kickboxes?”

“Yeah, Iwaizumi does I think. Why?” Kuro cocks his head.

“He could, like, I don’t know, give Sawamura some pointers or something.”

Kuro gasps loudly and hits him on the arm. “Kenma, you’re a genius!”

Kenma frowns, rubbing at his arm. “Not really.”

“I’ll send Bo a text right now!” He yanks his phone out of his pocket, typing out his message and sending it.

A few moments later, Kuro’s phone dings with an incoming text.

“He says that sounds like a good idea, so there’s that taken care of! Good idea, Kenma!” He beams at him, and Kenma looks up at the sky.

“Now we just need to get him a better suit, and he’ll be ready for action!”

Kenma snorts. “Honestly. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

It really had been. The design had been well-intentioned, Kenma could tell, the all-black and the crow’s foot actually working relatively nicely, but the ill-fitting jumpsuit, with its thinness in certain places and fading color, not to mention the _cape_ (he shudders to even think of it), needed a major redesign.

“I told him I’d ask you to make him one like ours. Not that you have to or anything!” Kuro backtracks, flapping his hands. “I just… this thing has saved my life more times than I can count,” he says, tugging the cat’s paw necklace that holds his suit from under his t-shirt. “If we’re ever gonna get that bastard, he’s gonna need something better than what he’s got now.”

He runs a couple ideas through his head, potential designs and functions that could really make a difference in Sawamura’s ability, and nods. “I think I can do something.” He pauses. “Besides, Keiji’s gonna have a heart attack when he sees him.”

Kuro tilts his head back and laughs, his mirth ringing throughout the night. “That’s exactly what Koutarou said. And _I know, right_?”

Kuro comes to a halt in front of him a few seconds later, stopping so suddenly that Kenma runs into his back. He opens his mouth, question on his lips, but he sees that they’ve arrived at his apartment without him noticing and shuts his mouth.

He moves around Kuro to his front door, turning to face him. They stand close together, breathing in each other’s air. He looks up to bid him farewell, but, seeing the odd look on Kuro’s face, furrows his eyebrows in confusion. “What?”

Kuro blinks, eyes focusing on Kenma’s like he’s returning from somewhere far away. “ _What_ , what?”

“You were looking at me weird. Do I have something on my face?” He runs his hand over his face.

“Oh, no,” Kuro says, voice sounding oddly choked. He clears his throat. “Your hair. You normally don’t wear it up.”

Kenma had almost forgotten. “Oh, yeah.” He tugs at one of the strands that had fallen out, feeling self-conscious. “It looked crazy where I’d been asleep. I didn’t want to look like you three,” he says plainly.

Kuro laughs, and he reaches out a hand to tuck Kenma’s hair behind his ear. “Well, it looks good,” he says, smiling softly, cupping Kenma’s cheek with his hand.

Kenma averts his eyes at the intimacy, suddenly very thankful for the darkness that’s hiding the blush currently blooming across his face and ears.

He glances back up at Kuro, who hasn’t moved his hand, and gives him the smile he saves for him, warm and open and free. His friend returns his smile, leaning in close as though to do… something, but his eyes widen, filled with an unnamable emotion, and he pulls away, dropping his hand from Kenma’s face.

“Th-thanks, again, for coming to get us,” Kuro says, looking anywhere but at him.

“Sure.” Kenma can’t help but feel like he’s lost something. “Text me when you get home, okay?”

“Of course.” Kuro smiles crookedly at him, and Kenma feels warm from head to toe.

Kuro turns away, tossing up a hand in farewell. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kenma.”

Kenma just watches him go, Kuro turning around once to wave, before he fades from sight. Kenma lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, unlocking his front door and going inside. He shuts the door with his back, sliding down to the floor to put his head in his hands. He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, but before long, his phone chimes with a text from Kuro.

_KT: i made it home :D_

He taps out a quick response.

_KK: if u ever get arrested again, i’m gonna let u rot_

Kuro’s response comes almost instantly.

_KT: lol love u 2 kenma :P_

Even though he knows Kuro means nothing by it, his heart still clenches painfully. Jesus, he’s got to get himself under control. He lurches up from the floor, joints cracking in protest, and feels his way down the hall and into bed, not even bothering to undress. He flops face-down into bed, Sakura jumping up to lie on his back, and he remembers the feeling of Kuro’s hand on his cheek. Before long, his exhaustion finally catches up to him, and he drifts off.


	4. watch me make 'em bow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daichi reconnects with an old friend and learns some sweet new moves, a powerful Extraordinary gives the gang a bit of trouble, and they fight some crime!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goooood afternoon!
> 
> i stared at a blank word document for longer than it took me to write this, so i officially wash my hands of it as i'm sick of looking at it. i didn't really proofread this so if there are any errors, i'm sorry, i'll fix stuff if i find it later haha. i leave for school in just over a week, so the time between updates is probably gonna change. it could be anywhere from two weeks to two months, so please bear with me as i yet again become a slave to the american collegiate public education system rip
> 
> the video daichi mentions bo and kuroo talking about is [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7vd_Oy8ixw) and it's a masterpiece, so go enlighten yourselves immediately. also i suck at writing fight scenes and know nothing about kickboxing other than what google told me so sorry if it's not right!
> 
> OOF this got long. ANYWAY thanks so much for the kudos and comments, they always brighten my day, and thank you all so much for reading!
> 
> oh, one last thing: the title comes from you should see me in a crown by billie eilish
> 
> social meeds!  
> [twit](https://twitter.com/biaizawa)  
> [tumblr](http://dickganseyish.tumblr.com/)

Daichi leans his head against his arm where it’s held aloft as he holds onto the hand grip above him. He closes his eyes, swaying with the movement of the train, and hums under his breath to the chorus of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” making a small hammering motion with his free hand each time the song calls for it. He feels Kuroo’s shoulder bump his every so often, jarred by the train’s motion, as they speed towards their destination.

It’s been two weeks since the 7-Eleven disaster.

Daichi had been rudely awoken the following morning by the harsh screeching of his phone alarm, each beep making his already-aching head throb even more. After turning it off, he’d seen that his phone was blown up with messages from Kuroo and Bokuto – it seemed they’d added him to their group message called “earth's sexiest defenders" against his will, just what his concussion-addled brain needed to see first thing in the morning – the first ten or so voicing concern for his condition, the remaining two hundred talking about, as far as he could tell through all the keysmashes and broken up texts, some video about three blond guys who liked baths.

It was nice to know they cared.

When he had stumbled blearily to the bathroom, he hadn’t been all that surprised to see that his pounding headache was paired with an impressive shiner. He’d briefly considered trying to cover it up, but his head had still been foggy from both lack of sleep and the mild concussion he’d sustained, so he’d figured anything he tried to do would be worse than if he just left it alone.

He’d been self-conscious for the first day, but when he’d slouched into creative writing on Wednesday and Suga came over to fret ( _You poor thing, bad luck really seems to follow you, doesn’t it?_ ), all worry regarding his appearance had flown out the window. If it made the man of his dreams pay attention to him, he’d decided, he could deal with anything.

When Monday rolled around, Bokuto had suggested they get pizza instead of fight crime, which Daichi thought was considerate of him until Bokuto revealed that it had been Akaashi’s doing, that he’d fully intended on them patrolling tonight until his friend (boyfriend? partner? Daichi still isn't clear on that) had said something otherwise.

“I told Keiji everything,” Bokuto had said around a mouthful of meat lovers. “The stakeouts, the arrest, all of it.” He gestured with his crust, then swallowed. “I hate keeping secrets, especially from him, so it was nice to get it all out in the open.”

Kuroo smirked smugly at him. “And who do you have to thank for that?”

“Only my best bro in the world! Thank you, o wise one, for your counsel.” Bokuto gave a mock-bow from where he sat across from them.

“You are most welcome, my humble servant.” Kuroo spread his arms wide, shoving Daichi back against the booth and knocking over his drink, sending a flood of ice and Mountain Dew across the table and into Bokuto’s lap.

“He was actually surprisingly okay with everything,” Bokuto said after their server mopped up the mess, replacing Kuroo’s drink but unfortunately not Bokuto’s pants, which were sticky and damp.

“That’s good.” Daichi paused to take a bite of a breadstick. “I know you were worried about him being angry.”

“He was actually more upset than anything, which was almost worse.” Bokuto frowned. “I hate seeing him like that.” He shook his head. “But anyway, we had a long talk and he was okay with our Monday night routine continuing as long as we take breaks every once in a while!”

“So is that why we got pizza tonight?” Why he’d procrastinated studying for the orgo exam the next day, more like.

“Well that, and Keiji was worried you had a concussion after what happened and wanted you to rest until you can actually fend for yourself in a fight.” He gave Daichi a sympathetic smile.

Daichi hadn’t even been able to defend himself. Bokuto was right, after all. He’d done a few small-time things before, sure, but nothing like what Bokuto and Kuroo got themselves into every week. Honestly, he was surprised it had taken this long for something to go wrong, so when Bokuto told him that he should join him and his friend at the gym for a kickboxing lesson, he quickly accepted.

It’s currently bright and early Sunday morning. He and Kuroo had heeded Bokuto’s suggestion to _wear something you can sweat_ _in_ _ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ_ and wore athletic clothes, Daichi in an old volleyball t-shirt from high school and basketball shorts, Kuroo in a pair of black running tights and a loose yellow crop top with the words “suns out, guns out” emblazoned across the front – not even the most outrageous of his clothes.

He feels someone tap him on the shoulder.

“Daichi.”

Kuroo using his given name had been a recent development. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, only that one day he’d been ‘Sawamura’ and the next ‘Daichi,’ but Kuroo had earned the right long ago, so he’d simply shrugged it off and carried on.

He pulls one of his earbuds out, giving nodding at Kuroo to continue.

“Our stop is next,” Kuroo says as they regain speed, reaching up to hold the hand grip. Daichi twists around to look at the electronic rail map above the doors and sees they’re approaching Aoyama-itchōme Station.

This gives him pause. “Are you sure?”

Aoyama is one of the nicest areas in Tokyo, so much so that Daichi wouldn’t dare set foot in 90% of the shops, dressed as he is and with the disgustingly yellow remnants of a bruise around his left eye. Kuroo supposedly knows the way, having trained with Bokuto and his gym buddy before, but, like he did when they switched lines a few stations back, he’s beginning to have his doubts.

“Positive.”

Daichi opens his mouth to protest, before deciding the better of it, and he shuts it again. Kuroo might be an idiot, but Daichi is the idiot who goes along with him, so he closes his eyes again, letting the dulcet tones of Ringo, John, Paul, and George still trickling out of the one earbud he has in wash over him until the train comes to a stop.

He and Kuroo disembark and make their way out of the station. Daichi feels incredibly incongruous to his surroundings, the high-end shops and well-dressed people making him stick out like a sore thumb, so he shoves his hands in his pockets as he slouches along beside Kuroo towards their destination.

After walking a few blocks, Kuroo leads them up to a building, the chrome of the revolving door handles gleaming brightly in the sun. Through the glass, Daichi can make out lines of exercise machines, from ellipticals to treadmills to stationary bikes, an entire wall filled with weights, and, the focal point of the room, two side-by-side boxing rings that take up the majority of the space. Daichi has never been inside a boxing gym before, but he feels, as they go, this is definitely one of the nicer ones.

Daichi, feeling utterly out of his depth, follows Kuroo through the revolving doors and inside the gym. Sure enough, the inside is just as nice as it seemed from the outside. Daichi casts a glance around the room, and he spots Bokuto and a very familiar figure, the rolled-up sleeves of his t-shirt tight around his impressive biceps, standing at the center of one of the rings.

“Iwaizumi?”

He turns, brow furrowed, before breaking into a smile upon seeing Daichi.

“Sawamura! It’s been a while!” He swings down from the ring and walks over to clasp Daichi roughly on the shoulder.

“Yeah, guess our schedules finally didn’t line up. Orgo hasn’t been the same without you.”

“You two know each other?” Bokuto says, jumping down to join them.

Daichi grins. “Oh, yeah, me and Iwaizumi are both pre-med, and we had practically the exact same schedule our first and second years.”

All pre-med students have the same basic requirements – bio, chem, calculus, useless electives, the usual – but classes are offered at different times and days of the week, so how they’d wound up in all the same classes two years in a row was a mystery to Daichi. Not that he was complaining, though.

“We’ve seen some shit,” Iwaizumi chuckles ruefully.

Seen some shit, they had. Iwaizumi and Daichi were both excellent students, but for whatever reason, they were both disasters in the chem lab. After their first semester – by far the worst – when each experiment they did, without fail, went wrong, they really should’ve picked different lab partners. Shared experiences really bring people together, though, even terrible ones, so he and Iwaizumi continued to stick together.

Much to Daichi’s chagrin, they hadn’t been able to take the same section this semester, a fact he’d mourned until he’d been paired with Kuroo and had received an A on their first lab. He never thought he’d see the day when he performed an experiment with no hiccups whatsoever. He still missed Iwaizumi though, their easy partnership and banter. If he had to be terrible at labs with someone, he was glad it had been with Iwaizumi.

“Remember that titration?”

“Oh God, how could I forget? What a trainwreck!” At the time, it had been a nightmare, but in hindsight, it was one of the most hilarious things that had ever happened to him because it was _ridiculous_.

He turns to his other friends. “So Iwaizumi and I were lab partners in bio first year, right? And we did fine in there, got all our work done, did fine on our write-ups, all that stuff. So we decided to take chem lab together too, and you’d think we would’ve been fine in there too, but one thing after another always seemed to go wrong. We usually couldn’t even finish our experiment and had to use someone else’s data to do our lab reports, like, that’s how bad we were.”

He shakes his head at the memory, laughing.

“This one time first semester of chem we had to do a titration, which shouldn’t have been a big deal, but literally everything that could go wrong went wrong.”

“We broke a burette each,” Iwaizumi interjects, “and the first time it wasn’t a big deal because there wasn’t anything in it yet, but the second time – I still don’t even know how it broke – we were in the middle of doing it, so hydrochloric acid went _everywhere_.” He tilts his head back to let his cackling ring around the gym.

“All over the counter, all over the other stations, and all over Iwaizumi.” Daichi shakes with amusement, laughter spilling out of him like water.

“For the first time in my life I got to use the emergency shower, and they don’t tell you how much fucking water those things hold, and let me tell you, it’s a lot. Like, a lot, a lot.” Iwaizumi looks a second away from falling into hysterics, tear tracks streaked down his face and trembling with mirth.

“So of course the entire lab was flooded. There was water _everywhere,_ probably six inches deep and _rising_. Iwaizumi was completely soaked,” he breaks off, howling at the image of his friend, “a-and he looked like someone had just killed his dog, he was so sad!”

He’d looked like the posterchild for orphans, standing there like a drowned rat with his hair plastered to his head and his now-holey clothes dripping wet, wearing a pitiful expression and water-splattered safety goggles. The thought of it sends him over the edge, spiraling into a fit of crying laughter. He clutches his aching sides, feeling tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

“We all had to evacuate and holy shit, the TA was so mad. I thought she was gonna kick us out of her section!” Iwaizumi swipes his tears away and takes a few shaky breaths.

“You cried –”

“Oh, I _definitely cried_.”

Kuroo, who’d been watching their conversation like a tennis match, his head whipping back and forth at each comment, finally breaks in, jeering smile on his face.

“You guys fucked up a _titration_?”

“Yeah we sure did,” Daichi says, the last of his laughter finally dying out. Jesus, that just gets funnier every time he tells it.

“But we survived, and honestly, that’s all that matters.” He and Iwaizumi fist bump.

He’d scraped by with a B-, and he’d never been happier to make a B- in his life.

Having finally come down from their hilarity high, Iwaizumi leads them over to a set of lockers, from one of which he pulls a pair of boxing gloves, a new mouth guard, and head gear. He hands these to Daichi as Bokuto pulls a similar set out of another locker and offers them to Kuroo, and the four make their way back to the ring, hoisting themselves up and through the ropes.

“You ever kickboxed before?” he asks Daichi, taking a seat on the floor of the ring to lead them through some stretches.

“Never,” he says, following suit as Iwaizumi does a toe touch.

“I’m just gonna show you some basic stuff today, and if this one –” he chucks a thumb at Bokuto, “doesn’t scare you off, we can build up to more advanced stuff later.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know I’m a perfectly good kickboxer!” Bokuto says, affronted.

“I never said you weren’t. You’re just way too fucking intense.”

Bokuto considers this. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

Iwaizumi continues to warm up with them, guiding them through the movements to loosen up their various muscles. As they finish the last rep of their final stretch – quad stretches – Iwaizumi wipes the sweat from his brow with the towel hanging from the ropes, grabbing his gloves and headgear as he returns to the center of the ring. The four don their gear and put in their mouth guards, ready for action.

Iwaizumi and Bokuto demonstrate the basic moves, things like side kicks, jabs, and elbow strikes, until they’re sure Kuroo and Daichi have the movements down, at which point they pair off with them, Iwaizumi with Daichi and Kuroo with Bokuto.

Iwaizumi removes his gloves to put on a pair of blocking pads for Daichi to practice on. He tests out the different punches, growing more confident with every swing, and before long he’s worked himself into a groove.

“How’d you meet Bokuto?” Iwaizumi asks, moving his hand to block Daichi’s left hook.

“Oh, uh,” Daichi does some quick thinking. “Kuroo introduced us a few weeks ago.”

Technically not a lie, although there was definitely far more to it than that. Daichi throws another punch, this one a right cross, which Iwaizumi blocks easily.

“What about you two?”

“We met at the gym on campus.”

“It’s why we’re both so buff!” Bokuto interjects, flexing his biceps, and Kuroo takes his distraction as an opportunity to clock him, cackling when Bokuto goes reeling backwards into the ropes, squawking loudly.

They continue sparring, Iwaizumi having Daichi switch to kicks to see his form, but as Daichi’s leaning into a front kick, Iwaizumi gets a far-away look on his face, focusing on something behind Daichi. He watches in confusion as Iwaizumi strips off the blocking pads and his headguard and swings down from the ring without a word, making his way over to the entrance where – ah, that explains it. Daichi chuckles, shaking his head, and he walks to the edge of the ring, plopping down so his feet dangle over the side and taking a long swig from a water bottle.

Walking through the revolving doors is a tall man with artfully tousled brown hair, sunglasses perched on his head, sweating attractively in his dark green short-sleeved button up and chinos, and Daichi can almost hear the choir of angels Iwaizumi’s undoubtedly hearing. Only Oikawa Tooru could make “hot and sweaty” a capital L Look, with the first few buttons of his shirt undone and his face flushed from the temperature.

Oikawa greets Iwaizumi enthusiastically throwing his arms around him with a cry of “Iwa-chan, I’ve missed you!” before being roughly thrown off, Iwaizumi’s chastising “Cut that out, Shittykawa, you don’t have to be so fucking clingy all the time,” barely audible over the rap music blaring throughout the gym. Daichi rolls his eyes, knowing full-well that Iwaizumi compensates for embarrassment with swearing.

“Soooooo, what’s the deal with that?” Kuroo drawls in Daichi’s ear, and Daichi narrowly avoids cracking their heads together when he whips around to look at him where he’s leaning over Daichi’s shoulder.

“He’s cute. Is that his boyfriend?” Bokuto asks, sitting down on his other side and swiping the water bottle from his hands.

“Nah, that’s just Oikawa. They’re not together, but…” Daichi thinks of a way to word it. “The sexual tension between them is unreal.”

The three watch as Iwaizumi steps into Oikawa’s space, intimate and familiar, and he says something that makes him laugh and punch Iwaizumi in the chest. Iwaizumi feigns injury, which causes Oikawa to laugh even harder, snorting unattractively between giggles. Iwaizumi shoves a hand over his mouth, apparently irritated at Oikawa’s noisiness, but Oikawa does something that makes Iwaizumi hastily remove his hand, face wrinkled in disgust. Oikawa only sticks a tongue out at him, dancing out of Iwaizumi’s reach when he lunges towards him menacingly.

Daichi looks at his friends, whose looks of mild horror mirror his own. Those two are… a lot, that’s for sure, but if they think this is bad, they haven’t seen Oikawa and Iwaizumi in their apartment. It had been a lot to process when he’d first gone to their place, the only thing on his mind afterwards being that if they didn’t get together soon, Daichi was going to lock them in a room together and force them to talk about their feelings before someone else had to sit through hours of them making mooneyes at each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking.

“They’re totally into each other –”

“No fucking shit, Daichi.”

“But they’re not together, for whatever reason.” Daichi shrugs. “They’ve been friends forever, so that might be why.”

“They might be afraid that it would screw up the good thing they’ve already got going,” Kuroo says quietly.

Bokuto and Daichi exchange a look. For all the shit they give Kuroo about his feelings for Kenma, it certainly would be difficult to come to terms with your attraction to your best friend.

A shriek interrupts their thoughts. Across the room, Iwaizumi snags Oikawa around the waist, tossing him over his shoulder like a sack of flour as he whines in protest.

“Iwa-chan, put me down! Where are you taking me? Oi!” He beats on Iwaizumi’s back, kicking his legs as he struggles to escape Iwaizumi’s grasp, whose bicep only tightens in response.

“No children allowed,” he says, dead-pan, carrying Oikawa through the doors and outside, where his squeals can still be heard.

“Anyway,” Kuroo says at last. “All I know is those two need to bone because I’ve only been in a room with them for five minutes, and this,” he shudders, nose scrunched in distaste, “is too much.”

“Oh?” Bokuto says, giving Kuroo a shit-eating grin. “Too much, you say? Like your and Kenma’s feelings for each other are too much?”

Kuroo groans, shoving away from them and stalking to the other side of the ring. “I don’t even know why I’m friends with you assholes!”

Daichi snickers and gives Bokuto a high-five.

~

Over the next couple of weeks, as June slips quietly into July, Daichi continues to train with his friends. Sparring with Iwaizumi provides the two with much-needed time to catch up, Iwaizumi clueing into his hopeless crush on Suga not even five minutes after Daichi brings him up. When an actual living person walks around looking like that _,_ with his soft-looking hair and soulful eyes and adorable beauty mark and _that smile_ , no one can blame Daichi for gushing, even if he kind of hates himself for having it so badly for someone he’s spoken to only a handful of times.

After their sessions, Bokuto, Kuroo, and Daichi return to the warehouse – Daichi’s pride refuses to let him call it a sanctum – where they do much the same thing they’d done earlier in the day, only this time incorporating their powers.

At first, their sparring is mostly one-sided, Daichi really unable to do anything but try his damnedest to keep out of Kuroo and Bokuto’s reach, but he’s never been one to back down from a challenge. He throws himself into training, spending every moment he’s not doing schoolwork practicing his moves, and before long, he’s able to put up a decent fight.

Tonight, Daichi had finally pinned Kuroo, using a flying kick to knock the breath out of him before immobilizing him. Kuroo gasps underneath him as he regains his breath, Daichi’s knee in his back as he pins his arms behind him.

“I give, I give,” he wheezes, face squished against the mat, and Daichi relinquishes his hold, moving back to sit on his heels. Kuroo sits up and puts his hands on his head to help him breathe. He inhales deeply through his nose, whooshing his breath out through his mouth, and Bokuto helps the both of them to their feet.

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve got a pretty good handle on this,” Bokuto says, grinning broadly.

Daichi returns his grin with a smile of his own. “Yeah, I’m feeling good. Maybe I won’t get my ass kicked next time.” He laughs sheepishly.

“I think you’re good,” Kuroo croaks, still winded. He gives Daichi a thumbs-up, smiling weakly at him from where he’s bent over.

“You and me next, Bokuto?” Daichi asks, squaring up.

“I’ve actually gotta go,” he says. “Thursday’s date night!” He shimmies suggestively, and Kuroo throws a foam cube at his head.

Daichi and Kuroo change back into their street clothes and join Bokuto outside. Kuroo closes up the warehouse, and they turn to make their way down the street when they hear sounds of distress coming from somewhere in the distance.

The three exchange a look, letting Bokuto make the call.

He looks torn, considering the options. After a moment, he squares his jaw, determination blazing in his eyes. “Keiji can wait five minutes. We’ve got people to save.”

Daichi’s still using his old suit – he hasn’t talked to Kenma about his upgrade yet – which he fishes out of his bag. He strips down to his boxers, thankful for the darkness and the relative desertedness of the area before slipping into his jumpsuit and placing his mask on his face, having ( _thank_ God _you got rid of that monstrosity_ Kuroo had wailed) thrown his cape away the night after The Incident.

Kuroo and Bokuto have suited up, so Daichi takes to the skies, surveying the area around him. The sound seems to be coming from the east, so he searches the streets and alleyways he can see, gliding in that direction to get a better view. Finally, he spots a few shadowy figures standing outside a closed shop; if he squints, he can barely make out the outline of what appear to be vines extending from one of the figure’s hands.

He jets back to earth, kicking up dust when he lands in front of his friends.

“There are at least four people about two blocks in that direction,” he points, “and at least one of them is an Extraordinary. I think they can manipulate plants ‘cause it looked like they had vines growing out of their hands, but we need to be careful so it doesn’t end up,” he swallows down his nerves, feeling the blood drain from his face, “l-like last time.” He turns away before his friends can see his face and flies down the street towards the crime scene, Bokuto and Kuroo easily keeping pace next to him.

The first tendrils of anxiety have begun to root themselves in his stomach. Last month he’d fucked up, supremely so, and it easily could have been a lot worse than it had been. Daichi had been lucky to escape with nothing other than a mild concussion – he could’ve been seriously injured, or, worse, killed, leaving his parents and Hitoshi to wonder why he’d done something as reckless as go into a dangerous situation utterly unprepared for what lied ahead. He’d been doing kickboxing for this express purpose, so that not only could he help people but also not be a liability to his partners in (fighting) crime.

He tightens his hands into fists, feeling his nails bite against his palms. He focuses on the sensation, the slight discomfort and the half-moon shapes his fingernails will leave on his skin, and he feels himself brought back down to earth, the rush of the wind and steady pounding of his friends’ footsteps on the pavement returning as the tension recedes from his limbs to coil in his stomach. He still feels vaguely queasy, but it’s no longer paralyzing.

As they approach the figures, Daichi can see that there are five people, three men, the tall dark-haired one with the vines, wearing a green and black jumpsuit and a stern expression partly obscured by a mask of leaves, as well as two others in dark clothes and animal Kabuki masks. The three crowd around two women, one of which is shielding the other with her body, brandishing a canister of pepper spray as she glowers at her attackers.

“We know you have it,” one of the masked men snarls, the ears of his fox mask poking out over his hood. “So hand it over before we gut you and your little girlfriend!”

“You know,” Bokuto says. He glowers at the men, his arms crossed, and Daichi comes to hover next to him. “Asking nicely works a lot better than threatening.”

As the men start to turn towards them, one of them is sent flying, knocking backwards into the Extraordinary and throwing both of them to the ground. Kuroo pops back into visibility, grinning devilishly.

The fighting erupts, Daichi swoops over the fox-masked man as he makes a grab for him, twisting around to land a solid kick on his back, which throws him onto his hands and knees. He scrambles up, whirling around to throw a punch at Daichi, who shoots easily out of his reach.

Behind his opponent, the other masked man, his mask a rabbit’s face, clambers off the Extraordinary, swinging at Kuroo, who vanishes with a taunting wave.

The Extraordinary stands up, dusting himself off, and he extends his hands, vines snaking from his fingers to reach for the three heroes.

“You three are using your powers for the wrong reasons,” he rumbles, his voice deep.

“Nah, my dude,” Bokuto shouts as he blurs towards the man and gives him a nasty uppercut, the velocity of his punch raising the villain off his feet before sending him sprawling to the ground. “I think that’s you.”

The man in the rabbit mask swings wildly, hoping to land a hit on _something_ , but Daichi can see as his mask splinters while Kuroo pummels him, his head thrust side to side with each blow. He finally loses his balance and goes down hard, mask breaking into pieces, and Kuroo reappears, reaching into his belt to pull out a length of cord to tie his hands with.

Daichi dodges just in time as the fox-masked man, taking advantage of his distraction, swipes at him with his knife. He feels the blade nick his forehead, and he hisses in pain. Blood streams into his eyes, obscuring his vision, but he uses the attacker’s momentum to throw him over his shoulder and to the ground. Daichi slams his face into the concrete, hearing a sickening crack when his nose fractures, and the man stops struggling as he loses consciousness. Daichi wipes the blood from his eyes and pulls an identical length of cord from one of his thigh pockets, securing the man’s hands behind him.

Bokuto is still locked in combat with the villain, a grey-brown streak as he avoids the reaching branches of a tree that has erupted from the sidewalk.

“Without strong roots, a plant cannot grow,” he says as he creates a vine shield in front of him to block Bokuto’s attacks. Kuroo shouts in alarm, and Daichi turns to see him wrapped in thorns. He feels something snake around his arms and torso, and before he can even shout, he’s constricted, the vines squeezing the air out of him. Daichi feels himself lifted into the air, and he’s thrown harshly against the ground. He nearly cracks his head on the concrete, shifting just in time to avoid it, but his body hurts down to the core as he gasps for breath, winded and aching.

Kuroo thrashes around in an effort to escape his confines, but each movement drives the thorns deeper into the exposed flesh around his neck and head; Daichi sees blood run down into the neck of his suit, and Kuroo stops struggling, panting heavily.

“As the three of you are now, you will wither and die.”

He releases Kuroo and Daichi all at once from their thorny prisons, the vines withering away into dust as he surrounds himself with a vortex of flowers, tossing Bokuto roughly into the side of the building. They spiral around him, obscuring him from their view.

“You should join me. Together, we could be great.”

When the flowers scatter, the man is gone.

The three heroes sit in stunned silence.

“What on earth was that?” a woman’s voice says, and suddenly Daichi is reminded of the fact that they aren’t alone.

He holds a hand to his head to stanch the blood still flowing steadily. Fucking head wounds.

“We aren’t sure,” Kuroo says, groaning as he sits up.

Bokuto makes a noise in agreeance from where he’s slumped against the building, head in his hands. “I’ll fuckin’ say.”

“Are you guys okay?” Daichi asks, moving towards the women.

“Yeah, we’re okay,” says the woman with dark hair who’d been shielding her girlfriend. Her face is pale, clearly shaken, but she appears otherwise fine. “Tonight’s our anniversary and we were on our way to the restaurant when we were attacked.”

“I thought we were going to die,” the shorter blonde one says in a small voice, tears trickling down her face. Her girlfriend wraps an arm comfortingly around her, and she buries her face in her chest, body shaking.

“You guys had better get going, okay? There might be more where they came from. Besides, you don’t wanna miss your reservations,” he says, patting the dark-haired woman on the arm.

She gives him a grateful smile and coaxes her girlfriend out of her hiding place, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Come on, Hitoka. Everything is okay now.”

The blonde woman – Hitoka – wipes her tears away and slaps herself on either side of the face with both hands, leaving red handprints on her cheeks. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, and when she opens them, Daichi sees her fear has vanished.

“Thanks for helping us, you guys,” she says, smiling gently at them at the three of them before looping her arm through her girlfriend’s. They start off down the street, only making it a few paces before Hitoka turns back around.

“Who are you three?”

Daichi looks at his battered friends. Bokuto shrugs.

“Just call us the Aces,” Kuroo says, shooting a wink at her.

A beat of silence.

“It’s a work in progress,” Bokuto laughs sheepishly.

She and her girlfriend give them matching amused smiles before continuing on their way, arm in arm.

“Do you think we’ll make it in time?”

“I’d think so, we left early anyway…”

Their voices die off as they walk into the distance.

Daichi calls the police as his comrades scrape themselves off the ground, giving the officers an anonymous tip as to the criminals’ location. He secures them to a lamp post – they won’t be waking up anytime soon, but better safe than sorry – and he and his friends, clutching their various wounds, limp back in the direction of the station and Bokuto’s apartment.

“Who even _was_ that guy?” Daichi asks. He’s starting to feel light-headed from the blood loss – he probably needs stitches, or at least a butterfly closure, but he’s not about to subject himself to the interrogation and fluorescent lighting he’d be faced with at the hospital. A shit ton of gauze and medical tape will have to do when they get home.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on him for a while, but this is the first time we’ve come face to face,” Bokuto says. He’s walking very gingerly and breathing shallowly, which makes Daichi think he’s probably got at least one broken rib.

“He stays off the grid for the most part, but we’ve only ever seen him with Kabuki mask-wearing assholes like those guys, so chances are he’s probably pretty high up in the Demon’s chain of command.” He spits blood out of his mouth, scowling.

The Extraordinary they’d just faced had been insanely powerful, and, not only that, but his tactics were well-developed, making him a serious threat. They didn’t know the Demon’s true abilities, only that he could cause explosions, but to know that he had someone this powerful working for him made it all the more urgent that they stop him.

Something pricks at the back of Daichi’s mind. One of the masked men had said something early on, something that was, in hindsight, pretty important. Daichi wracks his brain, begging his synapses to fire despite the dizziness, before it finally clicks.

“The man said that he knew one of those women had ‘it,’” he murmurs.

“What?” Bokuto leans in closer to hear him.

“Those men thought they had something, something important,” he says more loudly. “What was it?”

Bokuto smacks himself in the forehead. “Ugh, Daichi, you’re right! Why didn’t we ask them when we had the chance?” The women are long gone, off to celebrate their almost-aborted anniversary somewhere in the city, so they might never have the chance to ask them again.

“Well it can’t be nothing,” Kuroo says thoughtfully, tapping his chin with his index finger. “Those guys work for the Demon.”

“We’ll put it on the board,” Daichi says, blasé. Inwardly, he’s vibrating with excitement – he’s been dying to say those words ever since he saw the whiteboard in the warehouse. He’d been big on crime dramas and thrillers ever since he was a kid, so it fulfils a fantasy of his to actually use one during an investigation.

“Good idea!” Bokuto claps Daichi on the back, who stumbles slightly, wooziness and fatigue not helping his balance. “We’ll look more into it later, when I’m not _late for date night_ , oh God, guys, I’ve gotta go!” He darts away, somewhat cartoonish as he skids around the corner, and in less than a second he’s out of sight.

Daichi and Kuroo shuffle towards the station, both bleeding and bruised, neither bothered to change out of their costumes. They board their train and slump down into seats, thankful for the lateness of the hour and consequent lack of people.

Daichi leans his head back to rest against the glass, moaning softly. He hurts everywhere, and he probably looks like someone who got in a fight with a rose bush and lost. The thought almost makes him laugh. Suga’s going to have kittens when he sees him tomorrow.

_Ugh, tomorrow._ The only things Daichi’s brain will let him think about right now are the long, hot shower and warm bed waiting for him when he gets home. He’s never been more thankful for his later Friday schedule in his life.

Kuroo puts his head in his hands, elbows on knees, and he huffs out a laugh.

Daichi sits up, looking down at Kuroo in alarm. Did he hit his head? What about this is funny?

Kuroo sits up and punches Daichi lightly in the arm.

“You won your first fight,” Kuroo says, a tired grin stretched out across his face. He rests his head on Daichi shoulder. “Congratulations.”

Huh. How about that?

Daichi smiles to himself and rests his head on top of his best friend’s, letting the train take them, for now, away from the harsh reality of the world and towards the safety and comfort of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did y'all like that appearance of everyone's favorite wlws? they'll def be back, but as for when, who knows ;)
> 
> also, daichi and iwa-chan's disaster is somewhat based on a true story. when i was in high school, my best friend was my lab partner in ap chem, and although we never did something as egregious as flood the lab , we were the worst at labs despite having some of the best grades in our year, so i hope you thought it was as funny as i did haha


	5. head first and no regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys stop a bank robbery and get grilled by some reporters (including one very familiar face), Kenma saves Daichi the fashion victim, and Daichi gets lucky (figuratively speaking, of course).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyy guys, long time no see, huh?
> 
> sorry about the delay, i did tell you that school would take over my life, but i'm still sorry about making you wait! i'm so glad to have finally finished this chapter. it's a little short and not really proofread that well, but i hope you still enjoy it! the chapter title comes from aquaman by walk the moon, a song that has absolutely nothing to do with this chapter other than that it was stuck in my head while i finished this tonight.
> 
> as always, thanks so much for all the kudos and the lovely comments, you seriously have no idea how happy they make me.
> 
> social media:  
> [tumblr](https://dickganseyish.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](https://biaizawa.twitter.com)

“Daichi, behind you!”

Daichi whirls around to see the woman wearing a black ski mask level a submachine gun at him from her perch on the second-floor balcony of the bank. He ducks behind the counter as bullets riddle the metal where his head had just been, customers screaming in fright where they’ve huddled by the glass.

“Bokuto, get them out of here!” he shouts above the gunfire.

“A little busy here!”

Daichi risks a glance around the counter, and he spots Bokuto grappling with the woman’s partner, his hands stuck to Bokuto’s. His magnetization power had been evident the moment they’d arrived on the scene, coins and bills flying through the air and into his hands as he stuffed the money into a dark duffle bag, but they’d assumed it had been limited to inanimate objects until he’d pulled Bokuto towards him from across the room. They’d been stuck like this for nearly five minutes, Bokuto doing everything he could to escape, but his speed had been nullified.

The woman begins another onslaught of shots, and Daichi hides behind the counter once more. What is he supposed to do? They’ve lost the element of speed they once had, and he can’t fly for risk of being shot out of the air. A child’s cry pierces the air, rising above the general din of hushed murmuring and quiet sobs, and Daichi feels it all the way to his heart. He has to act, but how?

“Daichi!” a voice says right next to his ear.

He jumps, knocking his head on the counter as his friend materializes beside him.

“Ow, Jesus, Kuroo, a little warning next time?” He rubs the back of his head, frowning.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding not all that apologetic. “I’ve got McCree if you’ve got Magneto.”

Leave it to Kuroo to break out the pop culture references under (literal) fire.

He gives him a curt nod, and Kuroo vanishes, his Cheshire cat grin the last thing Daichi sees before he’s gone.

Kuroo hadn’t told him exactly what to do, but Daichi figures Kuroo will take out the gunperson so he can take down the Extraordinary who’s got Bokuto immobilized. He hears a cry of alarm, and he peers around the counter to see the woman’s gun wrest itself away from her and bash her in the face. Blood immediately starts gushing from her nose, saturating her ski mask and dripping down into her mouth. She brings a hand up to cover it, but before she can do so, the gun clocks her in the temple, and she goes down hard, falling to the floor with a resounding thud.

Seeing his opportunity has finally arisen, Daichi swings himself up and over the counter and launches into the air. He jets towards Bokuto and his combatant, twisting himself around at the last moment to land a solid kick directly on the man’s face, sending both him and Bokuto flying.

Daichi grimaces as the civilians gasp in alarm. “Sorry, Bo!”

Bokuto only hoots gleefully, albeit breathlessly, in response.

The Extraordinary deactivates his power and extricates himself from Bokuto’s grasp, wrenching himself up from the ground where he’d fallen and throwing himself at Daichi, reaching for the gun in his waistband. His eyes are wide, manic, and Daichi readies himself for another attack, but before he can do anything, Bokuto sweeps the thief’s legs out from under him, making him fall roughly to the tile floor. The gun tumbles from his fingers and skitters across the floor and out of reach. Acting quickly, Daichi throws himself onto the man, wrestling him onto his face and restraining his hands behind his back, taking care to avoid touching his skin.

He ties the man’s hands together with his cord, tying it swiftly and securely, before standing up, dusting off his hands. From somewhere off to the side and above them, Kuroo gives a shout of triumph, and the public begin to cheer, their terror fading now that they’ve been saved.

A grin breaks out over Daichi’s face, growing with each passing second. He lets the joy of the people wash over him, reminding him just why he does this whole hero thing, and he offers Bokuto a hand, hoisting him to his feet.

The police come in and take care of things, escorting the patrons and staff out of the building and into the arms of their frantic loved ones, and begin to clean up the scene. An officer climbs the staircase to where Kuroo stands guard over the woman, taking her from his custody and pulling her into a fireman’s carry to bring her downstairs and throw her into the back of the waiting car.

The Extraordinary has been struggling against his bonds from the moment Daichi tied them, but, thanks to Kenma’s innovation, they’ve held fast despite his best efforts. Two officers approach them, carefully blank looks on their faces as they pull the man to his feet and drag him outside, his swearing and vows for revenge following him out the door and into the police vehicle.

The police don’t really know what to think of them. Ordinarily, their merry band of misfits tries to stay out of the way of the police, since their uselessness and corruption are one of Tokyo’s worst kept secrets, but times like this make it impossible to avoid attention.

Kuroo clangs down the metal stairs and joins Daichi and Bokuto on the main level. “Should we –” he starts, gesturing at the mess of broken glass, scattered coins and bills, and toppled furniture around them.

“We did the hard part,” Bokuto says, wiping sweat from his eyes. “I think they can probably do this much.”

Daichi supposes that’s fair, and the three of them make their way outside into the heat of the late August evening and onto the street, where they’re immediately swarmed with reporters. Microphones are jammed in their faces from every direction, and Daichi recoils, shielding his hand with his face to block out the brightness of flashbulb lights and onslaught of questions from the press. He feels Kuroo shrink next to him, and Bokuto, sensing his friends’ discomfort, throws out his chest and shouts above the cacophony.

“Hey, hey, hey!” He flings his arms wide, almost knocking a cameraman with an impressively large camera to the side. “There’s plenty of us to go around! Ask us whatever you want to know!”

Daichi frowns, cutting a sideways glance towards Kuroo, who meets his gaze with an equally disgruntled look. Really, they should know by now that letting Bokuto take control of the situation never ends well.

Daichi strains to focus on the onslaught of clamoring voices, managing to catch the tail end of a short haired woman’s question.

“– reports of you three have arisen over the past couple of months, what exactly is it that you aim to accomplish?”

Daichi leans away from the recording device she’s shoved into his face, the intensity of her gaze discomfiting him.

“Well,” his voice cracks, and he can feel a hot blush bloom across his face. He clears his throat to regain his composure. “The crime rate in this city has been increasing over the past few years, and when you’ve got abilities like ours,” he says, voice gaining strength with every word, “we couldn’t just sit idly by and watch innocent people get hurt because we were too afraid to do anything about it.”

“That’s awfully noble of you.”

Daichi shrugs. “I guess. It just seems like the right thing to do.”

The woman nods thoughtfully before bringing the device to her own lips.

“You three seem to cause a lot more damage than you prevent. Do you have any comments about this?”

“Uhh,” Daichi scratches the back of his head, thinking of the 7-Eleven from that first night… and the train station last month… and the department store a week ago. “We’re kinda new to this, I guess, so accidents do happen unfortunately.” He smiles sheepishly at her, and she gives him a tight smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“And what should we call the three of you? For the news report, of course.”

_The Aces_ is all Daichi can hear, and he shoves Kuroo’s stupid voice down in his head.

“Well, we don’t really –”

“You can call us the Tokyo Triad!” Bokuto interjects, leaning into Daichi’s space and away from the camera one of the reporters brought with him.

Daichi resists the urge to punch Bokuto on the arm for his suggestion even worse than Kuroo’s. He pushes Bokuto away and forces a laugh. “No, you really can’t. We don’t actually have a name or anything. We’re just three guys who decided to use these powers the universe gave us for good.”

The reporter raises her eyebrows at this. “The universe gave these quote-unquote _powers_ to you, did it?”

Daichi laughs nervously. He doesn’t quite understand what this woman is getting at.

“I mean, one day I didn’t have them and the next I did, so I don’t really have anything to say other than that.”

“Hmm,” she tucks her recording device back into her coat. “Thanks for your time,” she says, tossing up a hand in farewell as she slips through the crowd and out of sight. The others, having drained Bokuto and Kuroo of as much information as possible, start to trickle away one by one, until one lone reporter, previously unnoticed by the three of them, remains.

He’s much younger than the others had been, his patient smile and kind eyes a breath of fresh air from the probing looks and flurry of questions, but when Daichi takes in the rest of his appearance, his windswept grayish hair, smooth skin, fine-boned hands, he feels his heart drop into his stomach.

Fuck.

“Sorry to keep bothering you guys, I promise I’ve just got one question and I’ll leave you alone,” Suga says brightly, pulling out a writing pad from his pocket and removing a pen from behind his ear ( _cute_ ). Daichi avoids eye contact, ducking his head slightly to keep Suga from looking directly at him. He might be wearing a mask, but that still doesn’t guarantee that he won’t be recognized.

“Sure, what’ve you got?” Bokuto says, bouncing in anticipation in the air of a boxer readying for a fight.

“What are your plans regarding the criminal known as the Demon? I know his existence hasn’t technically been confirmed, and the Prime Minister is being awfully tight-lipped about the whole ordeal,” he says, making a face, “but you and I both know that he poses a serious threat to national security, despite the lack of response from the government.” He puts the pen to his writing pad, anticipatory.

Daichi exchanges bewildered looks with his partners. Suga has proven to be more knowledgeable and more professional than the _actual professionals_ with one question, and Daichi can feel himself start to swoon. Sweet, gorgeous, _and_ incredibly smart? Suga is _so_ out of his league.

“We’re trying to find as much information on his whereabouts, allies, and plans as we can, but it’s proven to be a pretty difficult task,” Bokuto responds, breaking Daichi from his thoughts. Right, they’re in the middle of an interview. “Right now, we’re keeping tabs on the locations he’s been spotted and tracking every mention of him online.”

“It won’t be easy, but we’re going to stop him.” Kuroo adds fiercely. “We can’t let him hurt people anymore, not after the train three years ago or the apartment building. People like that…”

“Belong behind bars,” Daichi finishes, pitching his voice down, earning weird looks from Bokuto and Kuroo on either side of him.

Suga, unbothered, makes a few notes before flipping his notebook closed. “Well, that’s it from me, guys. Thanks so much for your time, and thanks for, well, doing what you’re doing to keep us all safe.”

He smiles broadly at them before turning and making his way down the street, whistling a jaunty tune as he strolls away.

“You okay over there, bud? Suga leave you tongue-tied?” Kuroo teases, raising an eyebrow.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just…” he pauses. “One of the reporters acted kind of…”

Daichi replays the conversation in his head, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, one even Suga’s refreshing presence can’t erase. Her behavior had been strange, almost as though she didn’t believe that they were Extraordinaries, and she definitely disapproved of their heroics.

“Like she thought we were liars?” Bokuto prompts.

Daichi nods. “Yeah, it was really weird.” He dwells on it for a moment longer before letting out a breath. “Oh well, no use worrying about it now.”

“Yeah, it’s probably gonna come back to bite us in the ass when the report comes out, so may as well forget about it while we can,” Kuroo says, shrugging. “But you know what they say!”

Daichi doesn’t, actually, and he tells Kuroo as much.

Kuroo turns to Bokuto for support, but sighs, put-upon, when he sees his blank expression. “Any publicity is good publicity,” he recites, slinging an arm around each of his friends before pulling them down the street.

“Just wait until they air the report,” Daichi mutters darkly and allows Kuroo to lead him away from the scene.

~

“Yesterday afternoon, the group of costumed men spotted at the apartment building explosion and the 7-Eleven robbery, as well as a myriad of other incidents, resurfaced again, successfully halting an armed robbery at a bank in Ikebukuro. The three were previously arrested after causing thousands of yen’s worth of damage at the convenience store, but it seems even arrest will not deter them. They were able to handily take care of the two culprits, performing seemingly impossible acts much like the supposed abilities of the Kabuki-masked man commonly held responsible for the metro explosion three years ago and the apartment building explosion a few weeks ago.”

“The Prime Minister issued his first official statement on the matter this morning, stating the following:

‘The citizens of our fine city have nothing to be worried about. We have begun an investigation into the identities of these vigilantes, but the existence of any “superhuman ability” is highly unlikely. As for the masked man, we are conducting further research, but we anticipate finding that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whoever these four men are, you have nothing to worry about, as we have the situation entirely under control.’”

Kuroo flicks off the television in disgust.

“This is just like last time, no one will get their heads out of their asses long enough to see what’s right in front of them.” He launches himself up from the couch and offers Daichi his hand, pulling him to his feet when he takes it.

“We’ve gotta go, Kenma hates it when I’m late, says it ‘takes away from time when he could be productive’,” he makes finger quotes, “and I’m not in the mood to deal with an angry cat.”

Daichi hasn’t really been around Kozume enough times to have experienced any of his moods outside of _vaguely interested_ , _exasperated_ , or _mildly amused_ , a by-product of spending so much time in Kuroo’s company, but, as Kuroo knows Kozume better than anyone, he’ll take his word for it.

As they make their way towards the Metro station, Daichi’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out, swiping it open when he sees that it’s a text from Hitoshi.

_SH: [link]_

_SH: looks like you guys have found your j jonah jameson_

Intrigued, Daichi opens the link, and he lets out a loud guffaw when he sees the article title and skims the first few lines.

**MASKED MENACES TERRORIZE TOKYO**

Kuroo turns to him in confusion. Daichi hands him his phone, watching amusement creep over Kuroo’s face as his eyes sweep the article. He tilts his head back and cackles, meaning he must have reached the end of the article, and returns Daichi’s phone.

“The things people come up with these days, I swear!” He shakes his head, still chuckling.

“You’re the one that said any publicity was good publicity.”

“And I stand by that! People will definitely know who we are now!”

Daichi’s momentarily distracted when his phone vibrates again with another text from his brother.

_SH: don’t forget me when ur famous!!_

_SD: That is honestly the funniest article I’ve ever read. Can’t wait to go terrorize the city with my “impressive but obviously fabricated sleight of hand”!_

_SD: And like I could ever forget you._

~

Tapping his pencil thoughtfully against his lips, Kenma examines the preliminary drawings in front of him. Kuro had told him that Sawamura had a few ideas about his costume but that he’d given Kenma permission to take the reins in the design process, so Kenma had drafted up a few sketches to get some ideas down on paper. They range from simple to outrageous, but Sawamura had apparently only had one condition so far: all-black.

He puts his pencil down and rakes his fingers through his hair, leaning back in his chair to look at the ceiling. There’s… something missing from all his sketches, some unnamable element that, despite his best efforts, Kenma can’t place. He hopes speaking to Sawamura will give him that last bit of inspiration needed to design the perfect suit, but he’ll have to wait until he and Kuro get here to find out.

He tilts his chair back on its back legs, fishing his phone out of his pocket to open Pocket Camp. He’d recently redesigned his camp, and it looks _fucking awesome_ , if he says so himself. He checks to see how much time is left on the space shuttle he’s crafting – he never has enough leaf tickets, and he’s too cheap to spend real money on them – and scowls when he sees he’s still got to wait four more hours.

He’s in the process of seeing if he can complete any tasks for Isabella when someone kicks the lab door open, making it fling back against the wall with a loud clang. Startled, Kenma jumps, the movement bringing his feet up from where they’re propped on his desk. Suddenly without his balancing mechanism, Kenma feels himself fall backwards, his stomach swooping unpleasantly, and he shouts in panic as he topples to the tile floor with a clatter.

“Oh, shit, Kenma, are you okay?” Kuro rushes to his side, crouching down next to him and peering into his face, concern written over his features. This close, Kenma can see that Kuro hasn’t shaved, a thin layer of stubble growing across his jaw, his full lips turned down into a frown, and Kenma curses whatever entity decided that he needed to be punished and made his best friend so damn attractive.

Against his will, Kenma feels his face heat, and he averts his gaze. “Don’t surprise me like that, Kuro,” he mumbles, rolling off the chair and sitting up to rub at the sore spot on his back. Kuro helps him up gingerly, putting a hand on the small of Kenma’s back as he stands up next to him.

“I’m so sorry, Kenma!” Kuro pulls him into a hug, pulling away after a moment to cup Kenma’s face with his hands. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

The worry so plainly shown on his friend’s face is almost too much for Kenma, but he forces himself to maintain eye contact. “Yeah, I’m fine, just be more careful next time,” he says, giving Kuro a small smile in reassurance.

Kuro gets a curious look on his face, eyes intensely focused on the lower part of Kenma’s face, but before either of them can do anything, they’re interrupted with a cough from behind them. Kuro yanks his hands from Kenma’s face like he’s been burned, and they both turn to look guiltily at the third person in the room.

Sawamura has his arms crossed where he stands a couple meters behind them, looking highly amused about something, and joins them in front of Kenma’s desk.

“Are these the designs?” Sawamura asks, sliding the top pages to the side to see the ones underneath.

Kenma wills the blush still blooming across his face to go away and shifts away from Kuro, moving to stand next to Sawamura. “Uh, yeah.” He clears his throat in an attempt to make the last of the awkwardness dissipate. “They’re not final, by any means, but this is what I have so far.”

There’s silence as Sawamura sifts through the papers, making thoughtful hums under his breath as he looks at the various designs. Kuro comes up behind Kenma and hooks his chin on Kenma’s shoulder, and Kenma flicks him in the forehead, earning him a noise of affront. Kuro moves away after poking Kenma sharply in the bicep in retaliation, wandering to the other side of the lab to tinker with the equipment he really shouldn’t touch but does anyway despite Kenma’s pleas and warnings.

“This one,” Sawamura says finally, shuffling one of the pages to the front of the stack and handing it to Kenma. Kenma examines Sawamura’s choice and is surprised to see he’s gone with the most daring of his designs.

Kenma had really let his imagination run wild with this one, making the suit both suitable and compatible for Sawamura’s power. He’d stuck with all-black per Sawamura’s request, but he’d had a fine layer of feathers over two-thirds of the costume. There was an extra bit of fabric under each arm, reminiscent of a flying squirrel, that could be pinned back or loosed whenever the wearer needed it. The bottom of the suit was loose around the hips and thighs, and the legs tapered at the bottom, the area below the knees wrapped in a sturdy black material of Kenma’s own design.

“Why this one?” He’s genuinely curious. Even Kuro had snarled up his nose when he’d shown it to him a few days prior.

“I don’t know, it just seems right, I guess?” He shrugs, at a loss. “Can I make a suggestion though?”

“By all means.”

He pulls a folded-up sheet of paper out of his back pocket, unfolds it, and hands it to Kenma.

“This is kind of strange, but I’ve always been really drawn to crows, so I thought maybe…” he trails off, watching Kenma’s eyes scan across the page.

Although the drawings are rough, he gets the gist of what Sawamura’s trying to convey. There’s an emblem of sorts, a crow’s foot in a rounded triangle, drawn up in the corner with a large circle around it, clearly important to him. In addition, he’s drawn a sort of taloned shoe, three sharp prongs extending from the front and one extending from the back. They look unwieldy, but, if handled correctly, they could be turned into a serious weapon. He hums thoughtfully.

“I-if you don’t think it’ll work, that’s fine, I just –” Sawamura stammers, apparently having taken Kenma’s lack of response as disapproval.

“No, this is good, Sawamura,” he assures him, and, abruptly, he realizes what he’s been missing all along. He sits down at his desk and quickly makes a few amendments to the design, adding Sawamura’s footwear and his own concept. He hands the sheet to Sawamura over his shoulder, smiling when he hears his gasp of amazement.

“This is… this is perfect, Kozume.”

Kuro, attention piqued, wanders back over, leaning over Sawamura’s shoulder to see the final design. He lets out a low whistle.

“Damn Kenma, forget everything I said about this being too on-the-nose. This is scary as fuck, oh my God.”

He’d kept everything the same, the feathers, the wrapped calves, the loose fabric for gliding under the arms, but he’d also included Sawamura’s logo and taloned feet, and the final part of his own design.

He hadn’t realized until moments before, but the missing element that tied everything together was a mask, and Sawamura’s mention of crows had given him the necessary inspiration to add this last piece. The mask covers the circle of Sawamura’s face from chin to hair line, goggles that double as eye protection and night vision covering his eyes, and, most frighteningly, a protruding beak that slopes downward and ends in a point.

It’s much like a plague doctor’s mask from the time of the Black Death, and seeing everything come together, Kenma shivers. This is an outfit that screams of death and strikes fear into the hearts of the wearer’s enemies, and he knows that soon, the villains terrorizing their city will come to fear the hero who wears this suit.

A hush has settled over the room as the three of them take in the image before them. Kenma can’t wait to get to work and see the finished product because, once Sawamura goes out in this, the underbelly of Tokyo won’t know what hit it. Sawamura’s stomach rumbles loudly, making him and Kuro laugh, and Kenma ducks his head to hide a smile. The contrast between Sawamura the hero and Sawamura the person is almost diametrical, and Kenma can only hope that he won’t lose himself to the darkness he’s going to have to face.

~

**message from: kick names take ass**

_bokubabe: hey guys keiji wants u to come over for dinner sometime soon!!!_

_bokubabe: he’s got to finish a project for his gender and film class but any time this weekend should be good for both of us!! let me know if u can make it :D_

_:3c: IS HE GONNA COOK FOR US_

_:3c: KOUTAROU THIS IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE_

_:3c: also can kenma come?? i’m afraid he’s forgetting to eat again, u kno how he gets :/_

_bokubabe: yea keiji’s cooking! idk what he’s gonna make tho, he said to ask u guys for suggestions_

_bokubabe: and OF COURSE kenma can come!!! he’s always welcome, u kno that!!_

_:3c: ok!! u kno i love everything akaashi makes so just tell him whatever is good w me!_

_bokubabe: daichi? are u down too? any food requests??_

Daichi taps out _I’ve gotta work on my final creative writing paper on Sunday, so if Saturday works with everyone then I’d love to have dinner with you guys!_ , but before he has the chance to respond, he’s distracted by someone tapping on his shoulder.

“Sawamura, hey! Sorry to bother you, I just saw you sitting here and thought I’d come say hey!” It’s Suga, the burnt orange color of his shirt bringing out the flecks of amber in his eyes, smiling happily at him.

“Oh, hey Suga!” Thankfully, their increased interaction over the past few weeks has allowed Daichi to function normally in Suga’s presence, although occasionally he does still get tongue-tied in the face of such beauty. He’s also a lot easier to talk to when, say, Daichi’s not assuming his hero persona and being interviewed by him. “How are you?”

“I’m great, how’re you?” Another thing on Daichi’s never-ending, constantly amended _Reasons I Love Sugawara Koushi_ list is that Suga is genuinely interested in people. Where most would ask this question out of politeness, Suga actually cares what he has to say.

“Oh, I’m good!” he smiles. “You started the final yet?”

Their final assignment in their creative writing class is to write an original short story using the various techniques and advice they’ve received over the course of the semester. Daichi has a few ideas of what he wants to write about but no concrete plans or actual progress. Ideally, he’d have started it a couple weeks ago, when they’d been given the assignment, but Daichi is, unfortunately for him, a serial procrastinator, and he still hasn’t given it much thought other than his first basic musings, and it’s due on Wednesday.

Suga laughs guiltily. “Oh, no, I have this horrible habit of leaving things until the last minute, so I haven’t even thought about it since we got the assignment. And I’ve been so busy, I intern for the newspaper –” _I know_ , Daichi wants to say, “and with all this,” he waves his hands in an ambiguous motion, “superhero business, we’ve had a lot on our plates.”

Daichi swallows down the hysterical laugh threatening to escape. “Oh, yeah, I bet,” he says, voice carefully level despite his heart beating the tattoo of _that’smethat’smethat’sme_ against his ribs. “I haven’t started either, I’m also the worst about procrastinating.”

“Hey, why don’t we work on it together then? I know we’re writing about different things, but at the very least we can force each other to be productive!”

“That’d be great!” Daichi says, a beat too soon, and he immediately curses himself for appearing so overeager.

Suga only laughs, before saying, “Well, I’ve got my internship every day after school, and my only free day this weekend is Saturday, so is that okay? I can probably make some room another day if I have to, though!”

Daichi, focused on Suga’s willingness to accommodate his schedule, almost forgets to respond. “Oh, uh, yeah! Saturday works for me too.”

Suga grins. “Ahh, okay, sweet! I’ve gotta be at the publishing office in twenty minutes, so let me give you my number and we can figure the rest out later?”

Daichi feels himself hand Suga his phone and then take it back once he’s finished putting his phone number in, but his consciousness is elsewhere, on a higher plane of existence, because _he has Suga’s number_.

“Okay, I went ahead and texted myself, so I’ve got your number too! Just text me later, okay?” He leans in to squeeze Daichi’s bicep affectionately, tossing a wink at him before turning away.

“Okay! See you Saturday, Suga!”

“Yep!” Suga calls over his shoulder, turning to smile at him before continuing on his way.

Daichi stands there watching Suga's retreating silhouette until he’s a pinprick in the distance. His brain still hasn’t fully caught up to his body ( _he has a study date – no, not a date – or is it a date? no, shut up, of course it’s not a date, you’re hanging out with Suga to work on your final, in a totally platonic manner_ ), and it takes the feeling of his phone buzzing in his hand to bring him back to earth.

_bokubabe: daichi? u coming or?_

He erases the message he’d been about to send, types out his response, and presses send.

_Daichi: Yeah I’d love to come! Is Sunday okay?_


	6. through all of the shadowy corners of me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daichi spends a day in a coffee shop, reads an interesting bit of news, and finally figures out just who Akaashi Keiji is to his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i'm back :D
> 
> school is, as it was last month, Rough, but i finally managed to scrape something together! i'm sorry for how long it's taking to get to any actual plot but i promise we're getting there! enjoy the calmness and safety while you can, is all i have to say :3
> 
> i was originally going to have this chapter and the one currently in progress as a single update, but i was unsurprised to see that i wrote a lot more than i meant to, so i split it into two rather than have a 9000+ word chapter. the chapter title comes from falling in love at a coffee shop by landon pigg (but more specifically the daniela andrade cover), possibly the most cliche song to use for this chapter but WHO CARES it's cute. anyway, thanks as always for all the love, comments and kudos are what keep me motivated to write this, so i really appreciate each and every single one!
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Daichi scrutinizes himself in the mirror and adjusts his button-up, fidgeting nervously. He’d stressed over what to wear to his and Suga’s study _session, not_ _a date_ for ages before finally deciding on a well-loved button-up with the sleeves rolled up and his favorite pair of jeans. It was casual, but not too casual, giving off the impression that he had put in a bit of effort without trying too hard, when in actuality he’d agonized over his wardrobe since he’d woken up at 9:30 until – Daichi glanced at his watch to confirm the time – 1:11, forty-nine minutes until he’s due to meet Suga at the coffee shop.

He gives himself one last once-over before deeming his appearance acceptable and leaving the bathroom. He spots Kuroo as he pads into the living room, sprawled lazily across the couch in a pair of purloined sweatpants and a sports bra. Kuroo looks up when he hears him walk in and lets out a wolf-whistle, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Damn, Daichi, you clean up nice,” he drawls. “Sugawara won’t know what hit him.”

“Kuroo, how many times do I have to tell you it’s not like that?”

“Like eight more, at least,” he says cheekily, leaning his head over the back of the couch to leer up at him. Daichi shoves at his head, and Kuroo ducks out of the way before chucking a pillow at him, which he dodges easily.

“Kuroo, if you make me wrinkle my shirt, I swear to God they won’t find your body for weeks.” He glares at his roommate, who smiles placidly in return.

He makes his way over to the door and puts on his shoes – short, brown, leather lace-up boots – before making his way outside.

“Have fun on your date!” Kuroo trills, raising up to wave at him, grinning all the while. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” That might be a better warning if someone else had said it, but coming from the man who once hooked up with a shrine maiden while she was on her break (life before Kuroo realized his crush on Kozume had been an interesting time), that’s not saying much. “And don’t forget to use protection!”

 Daichi flips him off and lets the door slam behind him.

~

He’s early.

He opens the door to the corner café, its bell tinkling cheerily. “Welcome to Hemingway’s!” a barista chirps from his post behind the counter, drawing Daichi’s attention toward the counter and the rather eccentric interior of the coffee shop.

It’s small, with the counter taking up the majority of the room and a few tables and chairs shoved wherever they can fit, but a long bar runs along the length of the windows, providing an excellent view of the street outside. The walls are exposed brick, paintings from local artists affixed to their surfaces everywhere, and potted plants adorning various surfaces in the café add a refreshing element to the little shop. He can see why Suga likes this place so much.

He orders a flat white and a panini from the bored-looking cashier and makes his way over to a table in the corner, near a scratched upright piano. He pulls his laptop out of his backpack and opens it on the table, opening the word document he’d created last night. He’d titled it, done the standard heading, and added page numbers, which had, despite being the most basic of activities, made him feel productive enough to save all actual writing until today.

He’s opening up the assignment guidelines when he hears the bell chime again, and, looking up, he sees Suga walk into the shop, eyes lighting up when he spots Daichi. He walks over to join him, putting his backpack in the chair across from Daichi and fishing his wallet out of one of the pockets.

“I’m gonna go order something, do you want anything?” he asks, smiling prettily down at him.

Daichi feels his face heat. Damn Suga and his beauty. “Uh, no, I actually already got something, but thanks, Suga!”

“Okay! Be back in a flash!” He approaches the counter, and Daichi can’t help but notice how good his ass looks in his jeans. He tears his eyes away from Suga and briefly meets eyes with the still less-than-excited blond guy at the register, who gives a cough that sounds like a hastily-disguised laugh before turning to take Suga’s order, and he focuses on his laptop once again, the back of his neck burning.

He taps out the beginnings of a story but almost immediately erases the lines. He’d realized after he’d gotten home after he and Suga had made their plans that he had _absolutely no idea_ what he wanted to write about. He’d done fine on all their other assignments, but he really felt the pressure to do well on this assignment in particular, since Suga was more than likely to read it at some point.

Suga plops down in the chair opposite him, jostling the table and startling Daichi out of his musings. He looks up, and Suga raises his eyebrows, lips turned up into a smile. “You ready to do this thing?” he asks, removing his laptop from his bag.

“Is it bad if I say no?”

Suga lets out that bright laugh of his that makes Daichi’s heart stutter. “Unfortunately for you, Sawamura, it doesn’t matter, because I’m making you do something no matter what.” Daichi keeps his mouth closed so he doesn’t accidentally say something suicidal like _I love it when you take control_.

Suga opens his laptop and the stickers on the back catch Daichi’s eye: some, like the Tōdai journalism department logo, the binary sunset on Tatooine, and Katsuki Yūri, are easily identifiable, but the others – a UFO with some English underneath, a greyish-green gravestone with some more English written on it (foreign languages have never been Daichi’s strong suit), and two people sitting far apart in a half-moon shaped pool – are a complete mystery to him. The sticker that most catches his eye, however, is the bisexual pride flag in the top left corner. He smiles.

“I like your stickers,” he says, and Suga stops typing to meet his eyes over the top of his laptop screen.

“Thanks, they were carefully curated,” he replies, mock-serious, before chuckling. “My dumbass best friend ruined my sense of humor forever, so this is the result of that.” He sweeps his hand around the back of his laptop in a circular motion.

Daichi laughs ruefully. “I know what you mean, my roommate is the worst influence.”

They each turn back to their work, typing away at their respective short stories, but Daichi finds his eyes drifting away from the screen and towards Suga every few minutes. He mentally hits himself and brings his eyes back down again, but eventually they always find their way back to the man across from him.

Suga’s worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, eyebrows furrowed adorably, as his fingers fly over the keyboard, their steady rhythm stuttering when he erases something or takes a moment to think. He rests his chin on his hand, lips moving as he silently reads what he’s written. There’s something about the unguarded and focused look on Suga’s face that makes Daichi’s breath catch in the back of his throat.

A barista arrives with Daichi’s coffee and panini and some blended sugary monstrosity for Suga, and it’s only after Daichi takes his food and glances at the clock in the corner of his laptop screen that he’d been staring at Suga for five minutes without pause. Suga takes his poor excuse for a coffee from the staff member’s hands and thanks her. Daichi looks up to do the same, but the familiar silhouette of her retreating form and blonde hair gives him pause.

He furrows his brow and thinks, turning his eyes upwards as he tries to place her. He _knows_ he’s seen her somewhere before. _It was dark_ , he remembers, _and she was with someone else._

“Everything okay, Sawamura?” Suga’s looking curiously at him, head cocked in adorable confusion.

“Huh? Oh sorry! Yeah, everything’s fine.” He waves him off. “I just… that woman looked really familiar, ‘s all.”

Suga makes a noise of understanding. “Gotcha. Well, if it helps at all, her name is Yachi, and she owns this place.”

Daichi shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. I probably just passed her on the street once or something.” Despite saying this, Daichi just knows it’s more than this. This woman feels significant – if only he could remember her.

“Oh, okay. Well, if you’re sure!” Suga takes a long pull from his frappe, smacking his lips in satisfaction. “Man, they make the best mocha frappes here! Wanna take a break in like five minutes and read over what we’ve got?”

Daichi freezes. He hasn’t got anything because he’d spent the last ten minutes too focused on Suga to write!

“Sure, sounds good.” He takes a chomp from his panini to hide any nervousness he might’ve shown otherwise and opens his document again, the blinking cursor on the empty first line almost taunting him. _Why is writing so hard?_ he bemoans internally. His mind races as he tries to think of something, _anything_ , to put onto the page and give Suga something to read. He casts back into his memories, knowing from experience that drawing from real life events provides easier subject matter both for consumption and creation.

He’s contemplating potential themes and motifs when inspiration strikes. _Duh._ His fingers fly over his keyboard, still moving too slowly to keep up with his brain, and in five minutes he’s got a good chunk of text written, almost two pages of writing. He takes a sip from his flat white, which has finally cooled enough to drink – _delicious_ , he thinks – and scans over what he’s read before sitting back and heaving out a sigh.

“Alright, Suga, do your worst,” he challenges, beckoning him forward with his hands.

Suga meets his eyes and smirks. “You’re on.”

They switch laptops, and Daichi reads over Suga’s progress. It’s good, on par with his other work, if not better. It’s a ghost story of sorts, a young girl facing a group of spirits on her way home from a friend’s house, but clearly each of the spirits is meant to represent something, something either Daichi’s too stupid to get or Sugawara hasn’t yet figured out himself. The girl is characterized incredibly well, as are each of the spirits, and Daichi is, yet again, blown away by Suga’s writing talent. If he weren’t going into journalism, Daichi would definitely suggest a career as a novelist.

He risks a glance at Suga, almost afraid to see the expression on his face, but he’s got a gentle smile playing over his lips as he reads Daichi’s writing. He finishes a few moments later, and his hazel eyes shine at him. “Sawamura, this is incredible! What inspired this? If you don’t mind me asking, of course!”

“Oh, uh, I’m really into supernatural stuff, and I’ve always been interested in the lives of the various monsters that’re usually pretty one-dimensional, so I thought it would be cool to – to explore the other side of the story, I guess.” It’s the truth, technically. His own feelings of alienation and otherness after discovering his powers definitely played into it, but Suga doesn’t need to know about any of that. “Do you really like it?”

“I _love_ it!” He beams, and Daichi basks in the glow.

“Yours was great too, Suga, I especially loved the toad spirit. I honestly sort of wish you were finished already so I could read the rest.” He returns Suga’s smile, and they exchange computers again, resuming their work.

The following hours pass in much the same manner, the pair of them writing, taking breaks for constructive criticism (but mostly snacks), and bantering playfully back and forth. The grumpy-looking cashier, evidently working the long shift, bores holes in their backs when he thinks they’ve been sitting too long without ordering anything else, and they both stab blindly at the menu when his much friendlier freckled counterpart comes to take their orders, leading to a confusing hodge-podge of food and drinks they hadn’t known existed. Who’d have thought a pistachio cinnamon latte could be so good?

Having only been around Suga in a public, academic context, Daichi had assumed that Suga would be as sweet and angelic as he acted around their professor and classmates. After spending nearly the entire afternoon together, though, Daichi’s realized that Suga has a devilish streak a mile wide, something he must show only when he’s gotten to know someone. Daichi’s touched for about ten minutes until he asks what the pool sticker on Suga’s laptop means and Suga spends the next four hours teasing him for being an old man who doesn’t know what a vine is. Last time Daichi checked, it was a plant, a plant that tried to kill him a few weeks back, and not something he cares to know about _thank you very much_. Memes he can do, and social media is also something he’s fine with, but a platform built specifically for six-second-long videos? He just doesn’t see the appeal.

Despite Suga’s playful jabs at his internet knowledge, their time together is comfortable, and intimate, and _fun_ , and before Daichi knows it, the sun has gotten low in the sky. He stifles a yawn, typing out the last few lines of dialogue before hitting save and snapping his laptop closed. They’ve been working for – he checks his watch, starting when he sees that it’s after eight – six hours, and he thinks if he looks at a screen for much longer his eyes will melt out of his skull.

“Finished?” Suga completed what he’d set out to do a few minutes ago and had taken the opportunity to lay his head on the table and scroll through his social media accounts. He props his chin on his arms so he can look Daichi in the eyes.

“At long last.” He rolls his neck, relishing in the loud crack it makes, and rubs his aching eyes. “God, that feels good to say,” he moans, and his theatrics get a laugh out of Suga, who stows his phone away and stands up. He stretches, and Daichi stares at the sliver of smooth skin that appears where his t-shirt rides up.

They pack their things, calling their farewells to the café workers who have been their constant companions for the day, and weave their way through the people still lingering in the streets to the station. Daichi doesn’t know where Suga lives, but he must also need to take the train, as he treads alongside Daichi, making small talk and the occasional sarcastic comment as he sees fit.

They pass a convenience store on the way to the station with grainy photos of Daichi, Kuroo, and Bokuto in costume plastered on the windows, labeled **Trouble in Tokyo? Three Unidentified Vigilantes Appear in Ikebukuro** , and Daichi hunches down, drawing a look of confusion from Suga but eliciting no comment. They’ve really got to work on their PR.

As they make their way down the stairs and into the station, Daichi fishes his wallet out of his back pocket, slowing his strides to stretch out these last moments together as much as possible. They approach the barrier and slow to a halt, Suga holding up his JR pass in explanation. “I’ve gotta go this way,” he thumbs in the direction of the JR station. “But I honestly had the best time today.” His eyes and nose crinkle as he grins at Daichi.

“Me too! I didn’t think I’d even get anything done. I usually can’t be productive around other people because I get too distracted, but you’re basically the perfect guy – uh, study partner,” he blushes at the slip, “so I’m glad I don’t have to do much else other than edit.”

“Yeah, same here!”

Having exchanged pleasantries, Daichi is torn for what to say in parting, weighing “Thanks for the great day” or “Can we do this again sometime” or “I really like you and all I can think about is how much I wish I could kiss you” in his mind. Suga looks equally hesitant, biting his lip as he appears to consider something, and Daichi can feel the third option winning out. Before he can do anything he might regret, though, Suga speaks.

“Do you maybe want to do this again sometime?” His voice tilts up with – is that _hope_?

“We don’t have class anymore though,” Daichi reminds him, and Suga flushes, the red of his blush stark against the paleness of his skin.

“I – I know that,” he stammers, uncharacteristically unsure, “but I had so much fun hanging out with you, so I thought maybe we could… I don’t know…” he trails off, looking up at Daichi through his long eyelashes.

Daichi’s heart thuds in his chest. “Uh, yeah, I’d love to hang out again! We can do whatever you want, go to an arcade or get coffee or, uh, watch a movie, anything is fine with me.” He’s rambling, but he can’t stop the words from flowing.

Suga brightens, any feelings of reservation sliding from his face to be replaced with that smile Daichi loves so much. “Really? Okay, awesome! I’ll text you sometime soon, maybe we can do something once finals are over?”

“Yeah, I’d love that! I’ve got, uh, a thing on Mondays, but other than that I’m free whenever, so just let me know what works for you and I’ll be there.” Is he being overenthusiastic? Maybe a little bit, but he honestly doesn’t give a single fuck. This feels monumental, like a mountain climber finally reaching the summit of Mt. Everest after months of preparation and training.

“Okay, cool!” They look at each other for a long moment, Daichi reveling in the glow from Suga’s happiness, before Suga breaks the silence.

“I’ve gotta go, I’m supposed to watch some shitty sci-fi movie with my best friend at his place. It’s this thing we do, pick a terrible movie on Saturday nights when his roommate is at work, and I had to miss last time when I had to work overtime to meet a deadline at the paper, otherwise I’d love to talk longer, I swear!” He says this last part in a rush, looking so apologetic that Daichi wants to wrap him in a hug.

“No, it’s okay, I understand. It was actually supposed to be my turn to make dinner tonight, so I should really get going too.” He starts to move towards the barrier, tugging his earbuds from his front pocket and untangling them. “But I’ll see you soon?”

“Definitely, Sawamura!” Suga gives him a double thumbs-up.

“Daichi.”

“What?” Suga furrows his brows, a small crease forming between his eyes that Daichi wants to smooth away with his thumb.

“Call me Daichi.” Daichi has amazed himself with his own bravery, but he still feels like he’s about to throw up.

“O-okay.” Suga ducks his head, the corners of his mouth tilted up. “See you soon, then. Daichi.” He turns to make his way down the hall leading to the JR Station, looking back to wave at him before rounding the corner and disappearing from sight.

Daichi punches the air victoriously, spinning on his heel to walk towards the barrier and press his wallet against the reader. He walks through the gates and follows the signs for the Marunouchi Line, the bright red lines guiding him through his haze of unadulterated joy. He catches sight of the same photo he’d seen in the store window plastered across a wall, but not even that can dampen his mood. He puts his earbuds in, queueing up _Emotion_ , and he grins the whole way home.

~

**DANGEROUS VIGILANTES OR UNSUNG HEROES? AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE MEN IN MASKS**

By Sugawara Koushi

"At this point, it would be nearly impossible to not have heard of the various costumed individuals popping up across the city. From the Kabuki-masked individuals who answer to the man known only as the Demon to the group of three responsible for not only thousands of yen of property damage but also saving countless lives, people with undeniable supernatural abilities have shown themselves after over 50 years of silence. The bygone era of superheroes, a time forgotten by many and shoved under the rug by the rest, seems to be rising once again.

The Demon’s cronies (the Kabuki mask-wearing villains and the mysterious figure dubbed Thorn) slipped unnoticed for quite a while, but, due to an error or a calculated move on the Demon’s part, they are no longer hidden in the shadows as they once were, instead facing public scrutiny. The public bear similar ill will towards the three heroes who entered the stage at the beginning of the summer, as well as the hero who joined the fray last month, but your author, dear reader, cannot fathom why.

Every time we’ve caught wind of these four heroes, it’s been because they were doing their utmost to help people. Sure, there was some collateral damage, but no one has been hurt or killed due to their actions, and they have stopped potential disasters from occurring across the city. The media and the government want to halt all discussion about these individuals and apprehend the very people who are trying to save us all. The Demon and those associated with him clearly prove a greater threat to us than the “masked vigilantes”, so we should rally behind them and support their efforts in any way we can. The powers that be want us to shove our heads back into the sand, where they’ve been for the last 51 years, but it would be foolish for us to do so when our lives may be in peril. Ignorance, despite the age-old adage, is not bliss – it is stupid, reckless, and dangerous, and why would anyone believe that Extraordinaries don’t exist when the proof is right in front of us? Instead of believing everything you see on TV and read on the internet, perhaps it’s time for us, as a society, to start thinking for ourselves rather than having the government tell us what to think."

Daichi has his nose buried so far into Suga’s article that he almost runs into the lamppost that appears in front of him. He yells and twists out of the way, feeling his face heat when he catches the hastily-averted eyes of a woman strolling past him, snickering to herself. _Great, more people who think I’m crazy._

With all the negative attention he, Bokuto, and Kuroo had been getting in the news as of late, it was a breath of fresh air to finally be praised for their actions rather than reprimanded, especially when it came from the object of Daichi’s eternal affections. However nice the praise may be, though, he’s far more concerned with the mentions of the villain called Thorn, presumably the Extraordinary with the plant ability, and the other hero who’d supposedly appeared a month ago. He’s definitely going to show Bo (and Kuroo, whenever he and Kenma get there) as soon as he makes it to his and Akaashi’s apartment.

Having finished reading before his near-miss, he puts his phone in his back pocket and readjusts the dish he’s holding, cradling it with both arms rather than the singular elbow it had been resting on while he’d read Suga’s article. Bokuto had texted in the group chat that morning, letting him and Kuroo know that _keiji’s pain is pretty bad today, so he’s not rly feeling up 2 cooking. we’re probs just gonna order takeout, but we’re both still v excited 4 u guys 2 come :D_ so Daichi had made a buttermilk chocolate cake with pour-over frosting that his mom used to make for special occasions in hopes it could brighten the mood.

He passes a few more buildings and walks through the gate when he reaches the entrance to the apartment complex. His figure casts shadows in the fading sunlight as he crosses the parking lot and treads to apartment number 68 (Bokuto had been very put out when he’d told Daichi how close they’d been to getting apartment 69), maneuvering the glass dish to one arm so he can knock with the other. He hears a bit of rustling behind the door, and then it swings open to reveal a grinning Bokuto.

“Hey, Daichi, come in!” He steps aside, allowing Daichi to pass and walk into the entryway.  “I know you’ve already been here, so this isn’t anything new or exciting but I’m so glad you and Keiji are finally gonna meet!” He bounces on his heels, looking for all the world like a kid on Christmas.

“I’m glad I could make it,” he says sincerely, kicking his shoes off and following Bokuto into the kitchen. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting Akaashi all week.” He has been. Daichi would be lying if he said he wasn’t horribly curious to know the exact nature of his and Bokuto’s relationship.

“He has been too! He’s getting changed now, we took it pretty easy today and stayed in our pajamas all day.”

“Honestly, you could’ve just worn those, don’t feel the need to do anything on my account.” Aside from the fact that Daichi would never ask someone to do something when they weren’t feeling well, he lives with Kuroo, a man who makes it a mission to wear as few clothes as possible when he’s at home. If Daichi had a dollar for every time he’d come home and found Kuroo shirtless, pants-less, or some combination of both, he’d be a very rich man.

“Nah, he wanted to have some semblance of formality since we’re just getting Indian – hope that’s okay by the way.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine by me. I’m not so keen on spice though, so…”

“Already gotcha covered, Kenma isn’t either so we ordered mild and hot!” Bokuto finally takes notice of the dish Daichi’s holding. “Bro! You didn’t have to make anything!”

“I know I didn’t, but I wanted to.”

Bokuto puts the pan on the island in the kitchen – an amazing act of forethought – before sweeping Daichi up into his arms and squeezing him tightly. Daichi pats Bokuto weakly on the back, still unsure of what to do despite the many times he’s been in this situation, and wheezes out a breath, his oxygen effectively restricted by Bokuto’s grip.

“Careful, Koutarou, or you’re going to kill Sawamura-san before we even get to eat,” an unfamiliar voice says.

“Huh? Oh, sorry Daichi!” He sets Daichi down, who sucks in a large breath to ease the aching of his lungs, and walks past him to stand next to, Daichi sees when he turns around, an astoundingly beautiful man leaning heavily on a cane. His high cheekbones, flawless skin, and full lips are only made more perfect by his dark eyebrows and artfully-tousled hair, and his clearly tailored navy trousers and white button up cling to his body in all the right places, giving him the image of a model having just walked off the runway. Despite knowing he’s never met this man, there’s something oddly familiar about him.

“ – what Daichi made!” Bokuto crows, snapping Daichi out of his reverie. He pulls the cover off the dish with a flourish, sweeping his arm downward in an exaggerated gesture. “Doesn’t it look good, Keiji?”

So _this_ is the famous Akaashi Keiji? Daichi was expecting more… Bokuto 2.0, as opposed to this Adonis walking haltingly into the kitchen to peer at Daichi’s dessert. He makes a noise of appreciation. “This looks absolutely delicious, Sawamura.” Akaashi turns to smile at him. “You really didn’t have to do anything like this, but thank you regardless.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a big deal.” He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. “It’s a super easy recipe, so it wasn’t like it gave me any trouble.”

“Well, in that case, I suppose we can excuse it just this once,” Akaashi says, teasing smile playing over his lips.

There’s a pause before Daichi remembers his manners.

“Oh, right, it’s nice to finally meet you, Akaashi-san! I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Only good I hope.” Akaashi sticks his free hand out, which Daichi shakes warmly. “Nice to meet you too, Sawamura-san. I hope Koutarou hasn’t scared you away with his, uh, _enthusiastic_ hospitality.”

“I’ve been in jail with him, and if _that_ didn’t scare me off, then nothing will.” Daichi deadpans, and his attempts to keep a straight face fail when Bokuto and Akaashi burst into laughter.

“Yeah, my husband certainly knows how to make friends, huh?” Akaashi teases, jabbing Bokuto playfully with his elbow.

“Hey, I know how to make friends just fine! Besides, the normal way is boring, befriending people by destroying a convenience store is way cooler!”

They move into the living room, Bokuto helping Akaashi sit down on the couch and resting his cane against the end table before plopping down next to him, and it’s only when Daichi’s situating himself against the arm at the opposite end that his ears finally catch up to his brain.

“Whoa whoa whoa. _Husband?!_ ”

“Huh? Daichi what’re you – oh wait, did you not know Keiji and I are married?”

“No! No I didn’t know you two were married! You never mentioned it, ever!”

“Oh, oops.” Bokuto laughs sheepishly. “I guess I forget that not everyone knows. Sorry, bud!”

“But – but you don’t even wear a ring! And you’re my age!”

Bokuto looks confused. “What’re you talking about, of course I wear a ring.” He reaches under the neckline of his shirt and pulls out a delicate chain with a gold band dangling from it. “I just don’t wear it on my finger so I don’t lose it!”

Daichi darts his eyes over to Akaashi’s hands, and sure enough, on the hand not currently entwined with Bokuto’s ( _how’d I miss that?_ ) shines a matching gold wedding ring.

“And I know we’re really young to be married,” Akaashi interjects gently, “but with everything that happened, we figured why wait, you know?” He turns his face towards Bokuto, eyes softening fondly as he looks at his spouse.

“Everything…?”

Akaashi folds his legs up under himself on the couch, grimacing as he does so, and leans back against Bokuto, who wraps an arm around his chest.

“It’s kind of a long story, but if you’re willing then I’d be happy to tell you.”

“Yeah, I’d love to hear it. You can stop anytime you’re not comfortable or, uh, you know…”

Akaashi laughs softly, saving Daichi from his flailing. “Yes, I know, thanks for being so considerate Sawamura-san.”

“Just Sawamura is okay. Or Daichi, whichever, I don’t mind.”

“You can call me Akaashi then, or Keiji if you really want.” He shrugs. “I’m okay with either, really.”

Bokuto slides out from behind Akaashi and smacks a kiss on his cheek before rising to his feet. “I’m gonna go get my laptop and work on a paper while we wait for the food, I’ll be right back!” He pads out of the living room and down an adjacent hallway.

Akaashi returns his attention to Daichi and fixes him with a solid look. “You sure you want to hear this?”

Daichi nods vigorously. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Akaashi arches a perfect brow. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, then, because this is, uh…” He pauses, seemingly lost for words for the first time that evening. “A lot to take in.”

Akaashi takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The silence is deafening, the suspense Daichi feels making it even more so, but just when he feels he’s going to expire from the oppressiveness of it all, Akaashi whooshes out his breath, meets Daichi’s eyes, and plunges into his tale.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick note: i knew going into this story that i wanted akaashi to have a physical disability, but, as a non-disabled person, i have no idea if what i'm writing is accurate or right or okay or anything, so if you have any advice for me, hit me up on tumblr (@dickganseyish) or twitter (@biaizawa). i'm gonna go into more detail in the next update, and i'm certainly not about to make this a story about living with a disability since, again, not really my story to tell, but i'd love feedback if you've got it! 
> 
> also yes, kuroo is trans, and if you don't like that then bye :^)


	7. open hand or closed fist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daichi learns the truth, everyone gets tech upgrades, and the merry band of misfits grows in size!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i anticipated that this next update would come about a month from now like the past two have, but a few days ago i sat down and wrote 3000 words of this chapter in one sitting, so i decided to just finish it. i thought about keeping it for another week and then uploading it, but i figured i'd rather just post it for everyone to enjoy now since it was finished!
> 
> i talk about injury and trauma and recovery in this chapter, so i just thought i'd give you all a heads-up so it's not a surprise to anyone. it's very basic, not detailed at all, but i still just wanted to let everyone know in case that's not for them. if you start at the sentence that begins "akaashi's pupils" and skip to "'hey!' bokuto finally interjects" then you'll avoid it. i don't think it'll be a problem, but i'd rather be safe than sorry, you know?
> 
> ANYWAY the chapter title comes from cherry wine by hozier. thanks as always to everyone for reading, and an extra thank you to anyone who leaves a kudos or a comment. i didn't understand what an impact they could have until i published this fic, so thank you!! hope you all enjoy!
> 
> find me on twitter @biaizawa or tumblr @dickganseyish (sorry for the lack of links, i didn't feel like copy-pasting the html code lmao)
> 
> edit: i realized i made a continuity error in my own damn fic! suga lives alone, oikawa and iwa-chan live together, but oikawa is a human leech and needs attention so he hangs w suga when iwa-chan’s busy, hence why he was at suga’s acting like he owned the place.

“Koutarou and I met in high school,” Akaashi says, eyes focused steadily on Daichi. “He’s a year older than I am, but we were both in the volleyball club at our high school.”

“Wait, you guys played volleyball? So did I! Where’d you guys go to school?”

“Fukurodani.”

“No fucking way. You guys won the inter-high two years in a row! How’d I miss that?”

Akaashi laughs, a pleasant, light-hearted sound. “If Koutarou forgot to tell you we were married, does it really surprise you that he never mentioned where he went to high school?”

He has a valid point. “You must’ve been on the team both years, though, right?”

“Yes, I was a first year when we won the first time and a second year the second. We were hoping to go for three, but with Koutarou leaving and, well…” He gestures to himself. “It wasn’t in the cards, I guess.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, sorry, I’ll keep going.”

“I found out about his ability about a month after knowing him. He definitely didn’t mean to tell me, but you know Koutarou.” He rolls his eyes fondly.

“He can’t keep a secret,” Daichi finishes, snorting.

“Exactly, so it didn’t take long for that to come to light. But anyways, we became really good friends after that, since he’d shared such a massive part of himself with me and I started doing the same, and around my birthday that year, we got together.”

“So you guys have been together for a while then.”

“Together for almost four years, married for just over a year.” Akaashi unfolds his legs from under him, grimacing as he stretches out along the couch. “Sorry, that hurt more than I thought it was going to. My pain medicine works wonderfully, but it can only do so much, you know?”

Daichi doesn’t know, actually, but he nods regardless.

“So we dated for a year, and it was… it was so great, Daichi.” His face takes on a distant look as he reminisces, smiling faintly. “I know it sounds silly, but I knew that he was the one for me almost from the start. Of course we had our ups and downs, as any couple does, but we never had any major arguments or anything. We made sure to communicate what we were feeling and that made everything go much smoother than it would have otherwise, especially with my anxiety and Koutarou’s bipolar disorder.”

“For our one-year anniversary, we decided to go to a nice restaurant and a movie after volleyball practice, and we were on our way home when the Demon attacked and blew up the train.”

“You guys were _on that train_?” Daichi whispers, face contorted with horror.

“Yeah. We didn’t really know what was going on at first, we’d heard and felt the explosion obviously and the lights had gone out, but we were at the opposite end of the train. The screaming cued us in, and everyone was in such a rush to get out that people were getting trampled.” Akaashi’s eyes, though fixed on Daichi, are far away. “Koutarou and I helped as many people as we could, I couldn’t tell you how many or even how long it took, but by the time we got off ourselves the fire had spread, and the police and reporters had arrived.”

“So Koutarou and I ran under the police barrier to safety, but there was this man, just _wailing_ , and I could hear him screaming for his son. I knew I had to do something, _anything,_ and Koutarou begged me not to go because he was so afraid something would happen to me, but I ran over and asked him where they’d been on the train and I went back on to save him.”

Suddenly, Daichi is blindsided with the realization of why Akaashi had looked so familiar to him when they’d first met.

“ _You_ were the one who saved him.”

Akaashi nods tersely. “I was. He was probably about four, and he was curled up in this tiny ball under the seats, I almost didn’t see him. I crouched down and asked him if he’d come with me so I could take him to his dad, and he let me pick him up. I told him to put his shirt over his nose and mouth like I did, and since the door was fused shut, I just had to put him down outside the window of the train. I was climbing out through the window when it exploded.”

Akaashi’s pupils have narrowed to pinpricks, and what little color there had been in his pale complexion has drained out completely, leaving him almost ghostly in the warm yellow light of the living room. Daichi puts a comforting hand on his shin, but Akaashi doesn’t seem to notice. Thankfully, Bokuto chooses this moment to reenter the room, and, displaying an amount of concern unfamiliar to Daichi, puts his laptop on the coffee table and sits on the floor at Akaashi’s end of the couch. He reaches up and gently untangles Akaashi’s hands from where he’s wringing them anxiously, twining their fingers together and pressing a tender kiss to the back of Akaashi’s – Daichi’s just now noticing – scarred hand.

“I don’t really remember much after that, that day or the next few weeks, to be honest,” he continues, voice shaky but strengthened by his husband’s touch. “They had me on so many drugs that I could barely open my eyes, much less talk or anything. I’m pretty thankful, to be honest, because even though some of my burns were bad enough that I didn’t feel them, most of them were just your standard level of awful.”

“I was in the hospital for nearly six months with rehab and skin grafts and all that stuff.” He swallows, throat flexing. “I’m really glad Tokyo has a good burn center so my family and Koutarou could come visit me because those six months were – were incredibly challenging, physically, of course, but also on my mental health. Being cooped up in a hospital 24 hours a day, seven days a week, constantly undergoing tests and surgeries and rehab and examinations – it starts to get to you.” Akaashi tightens his grip on Bokuto’s hand.

“They eventually had to amputate my right leg below the knee due to infection, and that was definitely a low point, especially since the doctors didn’t think I’d be able to walk again, what with the nerve damage and everything.” He looks down at his husband, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “But Koutarou kept encouraging me to stay positive and keep at my exercises. I thought I loved him before that, but everything brought us even closer together than we already were.”

His voices hitches on the last word, and he breaks off, voice choked with emotion. Bokuto looks up at him, concern written across every feature, and Daichi feels something wet drop onto his shirt. When he presses a hand to his face, he’s surprised to see that he’s crying steadily, tears dripping from his chin and onto his clothes. He scrubs the tears from his cheeks with the bottom of his shirt, and when his face is dry, he sees that Akaashi has regained composure.

“I really don’t think I would’ve made it out the other side without him. Everything that happened – dealing with the pain, not being able to play volleyball, missing his graduation, having to do schoolwork from the hospital between surgeries – really took a toll on me, but Koutarou was a light in my very dark world, and I knew then that I didn’t ever want anyone else by my side.” The look of utter adoration he sends his husband is so intense that Daichi feels that he’s intruding upon a private moment and averts his eyes. When he chances another look in their direction, Bokuto is resting his head again Akaashi’s thigh, and Akaashi is looking at him expectantly.

“Eventually I was able to regain use of my legs – well, my one and a half legs,” he amends, chuckling, “and got fitted for a prosthesis after my burns healed, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as when they told me I was going to get to go home.”

“Hey!” Bokuto finally interjects. “What about when I proposed, huh? Or when we got married?”

Akaashi bumps the back of his head with their still-intertwined hands. “Other than those, obviously.”

“I still have chronic pain and somewhat more limited mobility, especially on days where my pain is severe enough for me to need to use my wheelchair, but I was free of that awful place, and, more importantly, I was alive. But, of course, getting out of the hospital posed another set of problems. Koutarou, understandably, was furious that the Demon had been able to get away and that the police dropped his case, so he’d been using his powers –”

“Something I’d sworn to Keiji that I would never do,” Bokuto interrupts.

“Right, and he was doing it to gather information on the Demon so he could bring him to justice. He’d been going out at night to find information and conduct investigations while I was in the hospital, and I found out when I went to see him at school and he and Kuroo were all beaten up.”

“He was, uh…” Bokuto trails off, looking sheepish. “Understandably pissed.”

“It was the only real fight we’ve ever had. I didn’t talk to him for almost three weeks, I was so angry he’d kept something so huge from me.” He sighs heavily. “And it wasn’t just that he’d been hiding something, you know? I was also worried that he could’ve gotten hurt, or _killed_ , and that he hadn’t even told me what he was doing.”

“Finally, though, I convinced him to talk to me,” Bokuto says. “I was desperate to get him to talk to me through those weeks, and I thought I might’ve fucked it up for good when he kept declining my calls and avoiding me. But he finally told me he’d hear me out, so I told him about it all, about the people I met with, about Kuroo and Kenma, about what I’d learned, about why I was doing it – everything.”

“It turned out that part of the reason he was so adamant about not only stopping the Demon but about fighting crime in general was because I wasn’t even an Extraordinary, but I’d been willing to risk my life for an innocent while he’d been too afraid to do anything. There was, uh, a lot of crying and yelling, that night, when I brought up how afraid I was of something happening to him, because he told me that had already happened to me so why should I expect him to be unwilling to do the same?” Daichi meets Bokuto’s eyes, unsurprised to see them filled with passion. The two of them might be as different as two people can be, but the one common thread that binds them together is a desire to do whatever it takes for the greater good.

“He told me a lot that night,” Akaashi continues, “but one thing in particular has always stood out to me. He said that he didn’t only want to stop the Demon anymore, he wanted to be a hero. He said that having super powers doesn’t make you a hero, but your heart, your desires, your actions – _those_ are the things that make you a hero, and, by that definition, I was more of a hero than he’d ever been.”

Daichi feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes once again, and he blinks them away, feeling a little ridiculous. He’s done more crying tonight than he has in a long time.

“So I forgave him, and the next week he asked me to marry him.”

“So soon?” Daichi can’t help but ask.

“Probably not my greatest idea,” Bokuto admits, “but he said yes, anyway.” He grins dopily.

“So we got married the week after I graduated high school, and when I came to Tōdai, I started working with him and Kuroo and Kenma, first at our apartment and then at the warehouse, looking for any information on the Demon and other criminals that we could find. I hadn’t realized until Koutarou told me that he and Kuroo patrolled once a week, but since I’m just as desperate to see that bastard locked away, I couldn’t be too angry. Now I just make sure to give Koutarou any information I have before you guys go out, so you’re better prepared.”

“…wow.” Daichi’s completely lost for words. “That’s – Akaashi, you know you’re the reason I became a hero, right?”

Akaashi turns pink. “What?”

“I saw what you did on the news, that this normal kid my age decided to put his life at risk to save people he didn’t know while I repressed my abilities and was so afraid of using them and someone finding out. After that, I knew I couldn’t ignore my powers anymore because I’d be no better than that bastard, that I had to do _something_ , or I’d never be able to look at myself again.”

The blush blooming across Akaashi’s face deepens to an incredible shade, giving him an appearance not unlike a tomato, and he ducks his head in embarrassment.

“Daichi!” Bokuto cries. “That’s so sweet!” He stands up from the ground and walks the couple of steps needed to flop on top of Daichi in an open-armed hug, crushing the breath out of him. “I love you, bro!”

“…I love you too, Bokuto,” he mutters, face squished against one of Bokuto’s pecs. “Now please get off of me so I can breathe.”

“Do you regret it?” The question slips out in the quiet moments after Bokuto has slid off of Daichi and squeezed himself in between Akaashi and the back of the couch, and he almost wishes he could take it back. But then he sees the look on Akaashi’s face.

His eyes burn fiercely, and the determined set of his jaw tells Daichi exactly what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth. “Never. I might not be able to do some of the things I used to, but even if the only person I’d saved had been that kid it still would’ve been worth it.”

He reaches up to cup his husband’s cheek. “Besides, it made the bond between us unbreakable, and if I had to go back and do it again,” he breaks off to press a kiss to Bokuto’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

A sharp knock at the door makes the moment dissipate, and Kuroo and Kozume stumble through the doorway, panting heavily.

“Hey guys!” Bokuto exclaims, crawling carefully over Akaashi to bound to the entryway and embrace them. “Why’re you so sweaty?”

Kuroo strips from his soaked shirt, wadding it into a ball and throwing it next to the small pile of clothing articles he and Kenma have shed in the genkan. “Ran into some trouble on the way here. No big, I took care of it no problem.”

“Kuro almost got shot,” Kozume says, making Kuroo shoot him a betrayed look as they walk into the kitchen.

“Okay, maybe I did, but I’m fine, see?” He turns in a circle, arms stretched wide, as if to show he’s not riddled with bullet holes. Daichi and Akaashi shoot each other matching horrified looks and rise from the couch in tandem to join them in the kitchen.

“You almost got _shot?_ ” Daichi hisses. “What happened?”

“One of the Demon’s cronies tried to attack us,” Kozume says, gathering his hair into a bunch to get it off his neck. “He told us to give him everything in our pockets, so Kuro told him to go fuck himself.”

Bokuto, Akaashi, and Daichi wince.

“Yeah, that wasn’t my best move,” Kuroo grimaces, “because all he did was tell me that maybe I’d feel differently when he’d killed my bo – my _friend_ , and he pulled a gun out of nowhere and shot at Kenma. I was fast enough to get him out of the way, but the bullet missed me by a hair.”

“Then they fought for, like, a minute, and Kuro knocked him out and tied him to a post while I called the cops. They should’ve picked him up by now.” Kozume shrugs. “Who cares.”

“But we ran here in case there were more where he came from, so…”

“…that’s why you’re all sweaty,” Akaashi finishes.

“Pretty much.” Kuroo says lamely. Kozume rolls his eyes.

“Do you think it was random?” Daichi asks.

“We think so,” Kozume says quietly from where he’s still hovering next to Kuroo, “but there’s no real way to know unless it happens again.”

“Well, we’ll all just have to be more careful from now on. Don’t go out super late without telling anyone, and always have something to defend yourself with, whether that’s invisibility or, you know, a knife.”

They exit the kitchen and collapse onto various surfaces in the living room, Bokuto and Akaashi on the couch, Kuroo and Kozume squished together in a large plush armchair, and Daichi, somehow, on the floor in front of the TV. God, he’s _got_ to get a boyfriend.

The five of them sit in hushed silence until Kozume pokes Kuroo in what must be a particularly ticklish area under the edge of his binder and sends him into a fit of giggles that splits the tension in the room and allows conversation to continue as normal. Before long, the doorbell rings, and Daichi gets up from the floor and opens the door to get their long-awaited dinner from the delivery person.

He brings the bags, plates, and silverware into the living room, and everyone eats where they are, Daichi finally allowed to join Bokuto and Akaashi on the couch, and the rest of the evening passes with little fanfare.

Daichi does note, however, that Kuroo and Kozume are far more tactile than they usually are, seemingly unable to keep their hands off one another. Whether this means that they’ve finally gotten their heads out of their asses and gotten together or that their shared near-death experience has made them afraid the other is suddenly going to vanish he doesn’t know, but the intimacy between them is even more palpable than normal.

He knows that the world is filled with hate, violence, corruption, and all manner of awful things, and he knows that danger awaits them at the end of wherever this crusade against evil is going to take them, but spending the evening around the coffee table with these people he’s come to care for makes his heart swell with joy. Despite everything, love finds a way.

~

_SK: look what you’ve done to me_

_SK: [image]_

_SK: [image]_

_SK: tooru thinks i’ve been kidnapped and replaced with an alien doppelganger so i hope you’re happy daichi_

Daichi clicks on one of the images to see Suga wearing Monkey D. Luffy’s signature straw hat, pouting adorably at the camera. He saves it to his phone before scrolling to the other photo, this one of Oikawa Tooru facepalming in the middle of Suga’s bedroom, a bedroom now decked with One Piece merchandise. One of the things he loved doing with his brother was watching One Piece together, so when he’d heard that Suga had never seen it, he’d insisted upon him coming over and watching some of it together. It may have been a thinly veiled plan to sit shoulder to shoulder with Suga on the couch while they shared a blanket, but it had had the wonderful unintended side effect of getting him obsessed, and Suga seems to have acquired a considerable collection in the month since they’d started watching it.

Oikawa Tooru had been something else Daichi hadn’t anticipated. The first time Suga had invited him over – about three weeks ago to have a two-person Smash tournament – he’d been surprised to see Oikawa Tooru ensconced on the couch in a silken robe and a clay mask, hair pushed back with a wide headband. He’d questioned Daichi with thinly-veiled antagonism when Suga had left the room to make popcorn, evidently able to read Daichi’s ultimate intentions almost instantly. Thankfully, Oikawa warmed right up to him after proving he was worthy of his best friend, and he’d spent some of the evening with them in the living room, kicking both of their asses as Kirby before taking pity and serving as unofficial critic and commentator.

_SD: I am. Extremely, in fact._

_SD: Also I don’t know why Oikawa would be concerned, isn’t it his life’s greatest desire to meet an alien?_

Daichi presses send, chuckling at the image of Oikawa fangirling over an extraterrestrial. The opinion he’d had of Oikawa until recently had been one only of frivolity and unattainable beauty, but having heard more about him and spent more time with him has made Daichi feel not only guilty, but _stupid,_ for ever thinking that Oikawa was any of those things. He might be a little ridiculous, sure, but he’s incredibly intelligent, and hilarious, and a _massive nerd_. Suga had attributed this dissonance with his friend’s reluctance to show the world who he really is, and, having gotten to see more and more of the real Oikawa Tooru each time they meet has made Daichi really come to like this person he’d once written off as vapid and nothing more.

His phone chimes in his hand, but before he can unlock it, an arm wraps around his shoulders and pulls him into a warm, firm chest.

“Sorry for making you wait, bud, we got a little distracted before we left, if you know what I mean.” Daichi can’t even see Bokuto’s face, but the eyebrow waggling is audible in his voice.

“Koutarou,” Akaashi says, exasperated. When Daichi extricates himself from Bokuto’s grip, he goes to tug Akaashi into a one-armed hug.

“He always says that, he thinks he’s hilarious,” Akaashi says when he pulls away, rolling his eyes. “We got into an argument about whether you’d die or not if you were on a Ferris wheel and it broke and started to roll.”

“You wouldn’t die! You could just climb further towards the center, and you’d be completely safe!”

“What, and it’ll just roll forever, will it?”

“What else would it do?”

“What do you mean, _what else would it do?_ That’s not how physics works!”

“Daichi!” they shout in unison, making him jump. “Tell Keiji you’d live! You know I’m right!”

“Please tell Koutarou he’s being ridiculous.” He turns to his husband. “Sweetheart, you know I love you, but there’s no way that’s what would happen.”

“Uhh…” Daichi says eloquently. “I don’t want to get involved in,” he waves his hand vaguely, “ _whatever_ this is.” He starts walking down the street, Bokuto and Akaashi trailing behind him, still bickering. “But if I did have an opinion,” he calls backwards, making them fall silent at once, “I’d say that it’s almost impossible to survive a run-away Ferris wheel by climbing the spokes to the middle.”

Akaashi makes a victorious sound, and Bokuto huffs in irritation as he leaves him and blows past Daichi to walk several feet in front of them. Daichi falls back to give Akaashi a silent fist bump. The only noise for the next couple blocks is the rhythmic tapping of Akaashi’s cane on the sidewalk, but then Daichi’s phone dings again. He fishes it out of his pocket and conceals a smile when he sees Suga has sent him another photo.

“Who’s that?” Bokuto asks, the argument forgotten. He’s fallen back to walk in between him and Akaashi, taking his husband’s hand and swinging their joined hands back and forth.

“Uh, no one important.” Daichi tilts his phone away from his nosy friend so he can’t see the screen, but the damage has been done.

“Doesn’t look like no one,” he teases when he sees the blush creeping up the back of Daichi’s neck, smiling devilishly in a manner eerily reminiscent of Kuroo. “What’s his name?”

“…Suga,” Daichi says reluctantly. “We had a class together last semester.”

“Oh, do you mean Sugawara Koushi?” Akaashi inquires from Bokuto’s other side. “I had a video production class with him last semester. I’m a film major,” he explains. “I really liked him, he knew a lot about the subject and always put in a lot of effort in group projects and stuff, and we still talk pretty frequently.”

“That sounds like Suga. He was definitely the best in our creative writing class.”

“…creative writing class?”

“Yeah? What about it?”

Akaashi starts to make an expression, but it quickly vanishes to be replaced with a placating smile. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just, something makes a lot more sense now. Oh, look, we’re here, let’s go inside, don’t want to keep Kuroo and Kenma waiting!”

Daichi turns to see that, sure enough, they’ve arrived at Nekoma Labs, and before he can ask Akaashi to explain his sudden change in attitude he’s grabbed Bokuto’s arm and pulled him inside, leaving Daichi alone on the threshold.

“Oi, wait up!”

~

Kuroo is spinning around in a rolly chair when the three of them walk through the door. He and Kozume have been spending more time together since Kuroo’s flirtation with death, so it hadn’t surprised Daichi when his friend had texted him last night saying that he’d decided to stay the night with Kozume and just meet them at the lab tomorrow morning. Maybe this means they’re on the verge of a relationship, maybe it doesn’t, but all Daichi knows is, somehow, he misses seeing Kuroo every day. They might still live together, but Kuroo’s taken to spending at least one night at Kozume’s a week, so the first thing Daichi does when Kuroo stands up is yank him into a hug.

“Whoa, Daichi, bro, is everything okay?” Kuroo asks, pulling away to examine his face. “Are you sick? Did someone die?”

Daichi shoves Kuroo away from him. “I missed you, asshole! See if I hug you again, if you’re going to act like I’ve lost it next time too.”

Kuroo’s face falls. “Noooo, Daichi, come back, I’m sorry!” Daichi allows himself to be swept into another embrace, Kuroo’s arms tightening around him and lifting him off his feet momentarily. “You’re just normally not this affectionate, my dude, so you kinda threw me off, but I missed you too!”

He repeats the gesture to Bokuto and Akaashi, in turn, before traipsing over to Kozume and plucking his headphones from his head, making Kozume mewl in protest.

“Hey nerd, our friends are here.”

“Don’t know who you’re calling _nerd_ , Mr. “I made an A- in Calc III and cried because it ruined my 4.0,” Kozume fires back, smirking when Kuroo places both hands on his chest in mock-injury. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. _Nerd_.”

Akaashi sneezes, thankfully bringing their poorly-disguised flirting to a halt. Kozume flicks Kuroo in the forehead before standing up and walking over to a table with a small box on it. Everyone follows, coming to stand in a half-circle behind him.

“I made some modifications to everyone’s shit, and, obviously, I made Sawamura a suit from scratch. Kuro, I think the adhesive on your feet and hands should work now, but that _does not mean_ ,” he shoots Kuroo a meaningful look, “you can try to scale Tokyo Tower.” Kuroo gives him a mock salute, but when Kozume turns his attention back towards the box in front of him, he winks at Bokuto and Daichi. Daichi’s calling it now, Kuroo’s going to be the first of them to die.

Kozume pulls back the flap on the side of the box and taps three objects from it into his hand: a necklace, a watch, and a ring. Kuroo and Bokuto snatch up the first two, respectively, leaving Daichi to reach out a tentative hand and take the third one from Kozume. He weighs it in his palm, the metal feeling surprisingly light, and he sees how the fluorescent lights above glint off the crow’s foot emblazoned on the top.

Bokuto and Kuroo have already put their pieces of jewelry on and unleashed their suits, playfighting while Akaashi watches with a look of exasperation on his face. Kozume looks at Daichi expectantly, nodding towards his still-open hand in encouragement. “You can put it on, Sawamura. I’d really like to know if all my hard work was worth it.”

Daichi slides the ring effortlessly onto the middle finger of his right hand, holding it aloft to admire Kozume’s craftsmanship. “It looks good, Kozume. But now what?”

“You just have to press the foot, and it’s the same when you want to collapse it.”

Daichi takes a deep breath, hovering his left hand over the ring. He pauses, reveling in the moment, and then grins at Kozume before slamming his hand down onto the ring. He feels a tickling sensation as the suit creeps along his skin, the warm brown of his skin being covered with the pitch of the suit. He feels as it expands across his limbs and up his neck, the particles coming forward to form a pointed crow’s beak over his mouth and protective lenses over his eyes. The itching feeling stops, and he holds his hands out in front of him, turning them over to see the fruits of Kozume’s labor.

“Holy fucking shit, Daichi.”

He looks up to see Bokuto and Kuroo staring at him, mouths agape. “You look so badass, what the _fuck_.” Kuroo storms over to Kozume as Bokuto approaches Daichi to give him an appreciative fist bump. “Why don’t _I_ get a suit like that?”

“You’d look ridiculous.”

Bokuto, Daichi, and Akaashi try not to laugh as Kuroo makes an indignant face at an unmoved Kozume.

“Hey, hey, Keiji, take a picture of us.” Bokuto pulls Daichi flush with his side and throws up a peace sign. Akaashi gives a long-suffering sigh, but he pulls his phone out of his pocket and holds it up. “Say cheese.”

Daichi mirrors Bokuto’s peace sign, holding still until Akaashi lowers the phone. Bokuto bounds over to look at the photo.

“Keiji, this looks great!” He turns to Daichi. “I keep telling him we should get a YouTube channel or a Snapchat and he should run it, but he says that’s ‘irresponsible’ and ‘probably a bad idea’.”

Privately, Daichi agrees wholeheartedly with Akaashi, but he just nods. He takes the phone from Bokuto, seeing himself in his suit for the first time. He’s almost shocked, seeing how intimidating and powerful he looks with the all-black and the mask, looking exactly like Kozume’s drawings. He’s clearly got a gift.

“Kozume, this is absolutely incredible,” he says aloud. “I’ve gotta say, though, I kind of miss the cape.”

“No capes!” Akaashi and Kozume say in unison. “They’re tacky. And easy to grab.”

That makes sense, but it doesn’t mean a small part of him doesn’t still enjoy the aesthetic of them.

“Oh, also, before I forget, I installed comms units into your suits. I had to play with where to put them since your suits are all different, but you should just be able to talk and have the others hear it.”

“How do we turn them on?” Bokuto starts tapping various areas on his suit in search of the on-switch.

“You don’t. They’re attuned to your brain waves, so if you just think about it when you speak the other two will be able to hear it.”

Daichi keeps making the mistake of thinking that Kozume has stopped being able to amaze him, but here he is again, blown away by the extent of his intelligence.

“Kozume, are you _sure_ you’re not an Extraordinary?”

“No, not completely. But anyway, there shouldn’t be any problems, but don’t just go out and take on a villain without –” Kozume’s words are cut off by a thundering _boom!_ from somewhere above them. The lab shakes, the lights flickering momentarily, and the three heroes exchange looks before darting towards the emergency exit and up the stairs.

“This is exactly what I said _not_ to do! Hey!” Kozume’s protests cut off when the door slams shut, and Daichi flies up the stairs and out into the warm sunshine. Bokuto has beat him outside, and he joins him in front of the building to see a familiar green-and-brown clad man locked in combat with an unknown figure wearing an all-blue jumpsuit with a billowing white cape ( _ha!_ ).

“You should’ve joined me when I asked the first time.”

“Like I’d ever do that! I don’t fight for your side, Thorn-chan!”

Thorn sweeps a hand upwards and massive vines erupt from the ground, but before they can ensnare the hero, they wither and fall to the ground at his feet. He reaches down and picks up a piece of crumbled asphalt before throwing it at Thorn. Daichi starts to wonder what good that’s going to do, but it hits the villain straight in the chest, sending him flying backwards through the air. He’s able to stop his movement with a hastily-constructed wall of greenery, and he crashes to the ground in a heap.

Kuroo has finally joined them, glaring in irritation as he pants, and a nonverbal understanding passes between them as they go to join the hero. The man looks around at them in surprise, eyebrows furrowing over the top of his mask. “Who’re you guys?”

“We’re, you know, those three heroes! We help people?” Kuroo attempts to jar his memory.

The hero shakes his head. “No, sorry, not ringing any bells?”

Daichi sighs. “We’re the ones who fucked up the convenience store.”

“Oh! Those three! The… Aces, or whatever, right?”

Daichi feels the overwhelming desire to punch Kuroo in his smug face. “We’re still working on the name.”

Something snakes around Daichi’s ankle, and before he can react, he’s dangling upside-down ten feet above the others. _Shit_.

Kuroo vanishes, the other hero shouting in surprise, and Bokuto’s voice sounds in his ear. _We’re gonna get you down, bud, just hold on._

“Like I can do anything else!” He kicks his free foot against the vine to no avail, so he resolves himself to waiting like a damsel in distress and watches the action below.

“This is what you get for standing on the side against good,” the villain rumbles, sending a wave of branches towards Bokuto and the blue-clad hero, the latter of whom makes the onslaught blacken and crumble with a lazy wave of his hand. Kuroo reappears behind Thorn and kicks him in the small of his back.

_Wait, did he just say “on the side against good”?_ Bokuto asks, and Daichi thinks back to moments before.

“Yeah, he definitely said the side _against_ good.”

Thorn whirls around to grab Kuroo by the throat, holding him aloft as Kuroo struggles for air. He claws at Thorn’s hands, trying to break his iron grip to get a breath, and he looks about a second away from unconsciousness when Bokuto screeches, “WAIT!”

All movement comes to a halt. The onlookers freeze, cameras stop flashing, and Kuroo ceases his struggle. Thorn releases Kuroo, making him fall to a heap on the ground as he gasps for air, clutching his aching throat, and turns slowly to face Bokuto.

“And why would I do that, villain?”

“Because we’re not villains! We thought _you_ were the villain!”

“Why would you ever think that? I’ve made it clear to all of you when we’ve met that I wish you would turn from evil and join my side.”

“Definitely didn’t make it clear, my guy,” the blue-clad hero quips, “so maybe you should work on your recruitment tactics.”

“I apologize for any confusion, it seems my meaning was unclear.” He holds out his hands placatingly. “I’m trying to take down the Demon, and any time I’ve found one of his henchpeople, one of you four has shown up to stop me.”

“Because we thought you were working together,” Daichi calls down, and everyone peers up at him in alarm, evidently having forgotten about him as he dangles upside down and all the blood in his body drains into his face.

“I’m certainly not working with those villains. I only want to stop them, and I thought we could work together to do that if only I could get you to see my way of thinking and leave evil behind.” Thorn raises his hand and pushes downward, and the vine ensnaring Daichi slinks back into the ground. Daichi can feel himself start to fall, but he uses his power to catch himself and lower himself to the ground to join his comrades.

Kuroo stands up shakily and walks over to them. “So let me get this straight,” he says hoarsely. “You’re a superhero. This whole time, despite what the news says about you _and_ us, you’ve thought we were the bad guys and you were the good guy, and you just wanted us to become good so we could help you defeat the Demon?”

Thorn considers this, then nods. “That sounds correct, yes.”

The hero whose name they don’t know facepalms. “I swear I’m not usually this stupid.”

Daichi chuckles. “Don’t worry, man, I’m right there with you.”

“I still don’t like you, Thorn-chan! You were condescending, and rude, and have horrible taste in costumes,” he makes a face, “but I guess we can put differences aside just this once.”

“For the greater good, and all that?” Daichi asks wryly.

He smiles, self-satisfied. “Exactly!”

“So did we just get two new partners?” Bokuto’s eyes are wide in disbelief.

“I think so, Bo.” Kuroo grins around at all of them, holding out a fist for Bokuto to bump.

“Too bad we had to fuck up the street,” Daichi says ruefully. Police sirens sound as soon as the words leave his mouth, which is just _great_.

“Shit, let’s get out of here before we get arrested again,” Bokuto zooms over to the doors of the lab where Kozume and Akaashi look on in bewilderment. “Come on, everyone inside! We can talk in Kenma’s lab.”

Daichi and Kuroo exchange a glance before shrugging and following Bokuto inside, their two new companions trailing along behind them.

All seven of them pile into the elevator, and the silence on the ride down is stifling. Everyone piles out, and the five heroes have a silent standoff for who’s going to remove their costume first. After several moments, Daichi decides he’s had enough, so he presses down on his ring and feels his suit recede. Bokuto and Kuroo follow suit, and the three of them face the two still clad in their suits. Thorn starts to remove his costume piece by piece, but the blue-clad hero stares at Daichi, eyes blown wide and jaw agape.

“Sawamura?”

“Do I… know you?” Now that he thinks about it, something about that voice and that hair seems… familiar.

He rips his mask off, revealing large brown eyes, long eyelashes, and high cheekbones, and Daichi feels his jaw drop in a mirror of this suddenly-familiar man’s face.

“No fucking way… Oikawa? How – how is this possible?”

“Beats me,” he laughs in disbelief. “Who’d have thought you’d be an Extraordinary, too. Flight, I assume?”

“Yeah, and yours is…?”

“Oh, right! Mine is two-fold, I can strengthen or weaken almost anything. People, objects, surfaces, you name it!”

“That is so _sick_ , dude!” Bokuto exclaims, walking over to pump Oikawa’s hand. “I’m Bokuto Koutarou, nice to meet you! How do you know Daichi?”

“Oh, you know,” he says innocently, “his boyfriend is my best friend.” He grins evilly when Daichi shoots him a betrayed look.

“For the last fucking time, Suga is _not my boyfriend!_ ”

“Whatever you say, man.” Kuroo walks over to clap Oikawa on the shoulder. Leaning in, he stage-whispers, “You can tell us all about Daichi and his not-boyfriend later.”

Daichi really hates his friends sometimes, he really does. He feels someone come to stand beside him, and looks up to see that Thorn (or, whatever his real name is) is finally back in his plain-clothes.

“Those three are going to be terrifying together,” he says, and Daichi is at once thankful for this man who, despite the misunderstanding, can clearly commiserate.

“Yeah, I’ll say. Sawamura Daichi.” He offers his hand, which the taller man gently crushes in his own.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi. Pleasure to meet you, Sawamura.”

“Sorry about the whole attacking-you thing.”

“I apologize as well. It was never my intention to sow discord.”

“Uh, yeah, same.” Daichi gets the feeling that Ushijima is going to be, uh, _a lot_ , but he’s thrilled nonetheless to have such a powerful Extraordinary on their side. Having felt first-hand what his abilities are like, Daichi knows that the five of them together are going to pose a serious threat to the Demon and his associates. His thoughts are interrupted when Bokuto punches a hole straight through a table, Oikawa having either weakened the table or strengthened Bokuto’s fist, and the look of abject despair Kozume sends his way makes him stifle a hysterical laugh.

“Welcome to the team.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case any of you were thinking that bokuto and akaashi's ferris wheel argument was unrealistic, my brother and i once got into a massive argument with his best friend over that subject that lasted over an hour. it ended in stalemate, but we were in agreeance with akaashi that no, you would not be able to survive on a rolling ferris wheel by climbing to the middle.
> 
> also, like, let me know if having akaashi have a disability is okay? i'm afraid that it seems like he's a prop or a plot device when that's not what i've intended at all. something happened to him as a result of the demon, and i hope it doesn't seem like his disability is a motivator for daichi because it's not. if that's not what i've conveyed and you have some advice for me, drop me a dm and we can talk. thanks y'all!


End file.
